


Chantilly Lace

by Khirsah



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:42:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 39,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5607184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirsah/pseuds/Khirsah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the lean years before the war, she posed for the occasional dirty mag to make ends meet. She never expected any of those pin-ups to survive the end of the world.</p><p>...or end up in the hands of the mouthiest sniper she's ever met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme prompt:
> 
> That law degree didn't come cheap. F!SS sometimes made extra cash by posing as a pin-up girl, and some of those pictures/magazines made it through the war... Any male character finds one and faps to it. OP loves Deacon and MacCready best, but any fella will do.
> 
> If he finds the pics before meeting F!SS for the first time, bonus points for the 'oh shit' moment when he recognizes her. :)

“Babe,” Nate said. He wrapped a strong arm around her, tugging her back against the shell of his body. Ava let herself go soft and unresisting against him the way she knew he wanted, lips tucking up into a smile at the possessive strum of his hand across her belly. “You’re not seriously going to tack that thing up _here_ , are you?”

She glanced back, one dark brow arched. “And why shouldn’t I?”

“The neighbors will see. Hell,” Nate added, fingers splaying wide, “that _thing_ will see.”

“That _thing_ has a name,” Ava said. She turned to break his hold, one hand pushed against Nate’s broad chest in warning when he would have grabbed for her again, keeping him back. Her nails—red as her lips, bright against the muted greens and blacks of his military jacket—pressed four indignant points against worsted wool. “And I seriously doubt Codsworth objects to the sight of me in my unmentionables.”

Codsworth floated by as if summoned, metal parts whirring softly.

“Ava,” Nate began. He was frowning. He always frowned when she refused to fall in line. _The curse of marrying a headstrong girl,_ his father liked to laugh.

( _And what’s the curse of having a misogynistic ass for a father-in-law?_ Ava managed not to say, but the words were tart and ready just behind her smile. Someday. _Someday_.)

“Nate?”

He glanced away, eyeing the gilt-framed picture with a conflicted expression. There was shame there, and desire, and pride, and embarrassment. She wondered what his friends at the VA would say if they wandered inside and spotted that candy-colored old picture of her, tits out and smile wicked as a vamp’s. She wondered whether they’d _already_ stumbled across it beneath their beds or in their little man caves, stuttering in horror as they flipped past buxom blondes and ginger thatches to discover _Nate’s Old Lady_ spread like a present just waiting to be unwrapped.

Ava supposed she should be just as embarrassed as her husband at the thought. Instead, it just made her feel _alive_.

“I’m waiting, honey,” she said. Ava dropped her hand and crossed her arms over her sore breasts; she didn’t laugh when his eyes followed the motion, but that was only because it was so _nice_ to be an object of desire again, if only for a moment. Pregnancy, it turned out, was just as much of a bitch as she’d always suspected. The women at the country club were fucking _liars_.

Nate dragged his eyes back up, only to look around their little suburban utopia helplessly. “It’s just,” he began. “Well. A little unseemly, don’t you think?”

 _That’s half the fun_. But no, she couldn’t say that. “Compromise,” Ava offered. “I’ll take it down when anyone visits and slap a cow-eyed Jesus up in its place. Will that make you feel better?”

He gave a huffing laugh. “ _Ava_.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

Nate just shook his head and reached for her again, one arm snaking around her middle to reel her close. Ava allowed it, fingers tangling in the collar of his jacket when he swiped that big hand down her spine. He was looking at her picture and holding her; was his Catholic mind spinning out all kinds of Madonna and Whore imagery? Was he cradling his pregnant wife and remembering the college girl who used to crawl under the library table and suck him off to the sound of pens scratching over paper and Nate struggling to muffle his cries with an ink-stained fist? God, she missed school. “Well. _All right_. But if you end up scarring our overly polite British butler, you’re going to have to pay for the memory wipe, _vixen_.”

She looked up on a laugh, catching his chin in a quick, just shy of too-hard nip. “If you’re so concerned, why don’t you ask him? Codsworth,” Ava added, eyes never leaving her husband’s. They were darkening with promise. She wondered if she could get away with pushing her hands up under his shirt and raking shellacked nails down his back? “Do you have any problem with my hanging old pin-ups in the living room?”

Codsworth swung away from the kitchen, bobbing closer. There was a soft _click_ before he spoke; she’d need to call someone out from General Atomics to get that seen to before the baby came. “Why, _no_ , mum. No problem at all. And may I say, it is an extraordinarily fetching picture, to be sure.”

He wasn’t wrong. Eight months pregnant and piling more curves onto curves every day, Ava felt detached enough from her own body to be able to look at those old pictures—taken during the lean, hungry years before she’d passed the bar and sweet-talked her way into one of Boston’s best practices—and see something beautiful. The girl in the (airbrushed, but vanity could ignore that bit, couldn’t it?) photo was smiling with wicked interest at the camera, eyes a glittering near-black, mouth a wide slash of cherry red. Her breasts were bare and heavy even then, coral-pink nipples tight against the creamy stretch of skin. One leg was pulled up, flaunting the curve of her hip, her thigh, and only _just_ hiding the dark thatch trimmed down for modesty. Her hair was swept up in what had been her trademark: pinned and rolled and curled to perfection, raven-dark as the wing-tipped kohl lining her eyes.

 _Chantilly Lace_ scrawled beneath her, sinfully red against the delicately innocent background. At the time, it had felt like sprawling out bare-ass amongst her grandmother’s doilies. Now, a few years later and settled (God help her) enough to be able to look back wistfully on the _good old days_ …it didn’t seem so silly.

“Babe?” Nate said quietly.

She patted his arm, turning one of his favorite smiles up at him. “It’s nothing,” Ava said. And for the most part, she meant it. “Just feeling nostalgic for a moment.”

Her all-too-upstanding husband sighed and rubbed her back again. There were some days she thought he preferred her like this—big with child, demurely covered up, the only nods to her _wicked old days_ a penchant for red and dark hair done in neat victory rolls. _Vanquished_ , like the witch at the end of every story book. “Nostalgic for what? Being poor enough you practically had to prostitute yourself? Come on,” he added, sliding that strong arm around her shoulders and giving her a little tug. “Why don’t we go for a walk in the park? It’s such a nice day out, and I’m sure our little champ could use the exercise.”

Back went the possessive hand covering her belly. She didn’t really want to slap his hand away—that was just the hormones talking. Wasn’t that what her father-in-law turned doctor kept saying? The hormones were making her _feisty_?

Feisty.

Like she was a dog that needed to be kept on its leash.

“Of course,” Ava said, reminding herself that she loved this man, loved the baby inside her, loved her life. She’d fought hard enough to get it, hadn’t she? “A walk sounds wonderful.” She leaned into him, letting herself be led past a happily whirring Codsworth and toward the big, neat, perfect suburban dream she, Nate, and little Shaun would share.

But she cast a glance over her shoulder before she was ushered outside, catching her own eye in that gilt-framed picture taken not _that_ terribly long ago; the dark sweep of hair, the brazenly naked body, the wicked _know-you-wanna-fuck-me-and-maybe-I’ll-just-let-you_ smile. And tucked safely against the side of her doting military hero husband, the very picture of upper middle class values…Ava smiled back.


	2. Chapter 2

Her first thought upon staggering out of cryo was: _Shaun._

That was it. That was all she could manage, crumpled to the floor in her blue vault suit, eyes filmed with still-frozen tears. Just her baby’s name, echoing over and over in her head like that first warning klaxon.

Just…Shaun. Shaun. Shaun. Shaun. Shaun Shaun Shaun Shaun _Shaun_.

They’d taken her baby. They’d stolen her son. They’d killed her husband. They’d—

_Shaun._

And then as she clawed her way back to her feet, taking in the abandoned pods—Nate, staring through the blood-spattered window, caught forever in the ugly moment of death—and the vault with that _fucking_ voice repeating its message over and over and over, a second thought came, pushing through the shocked haze like a face surfacing in a fogged mirror:

_I’m going to make every last one of them pay._


	3. Chapter 3

“I don’t know,” the Minuteman said quietly from just over her left shoulder. “It doesn’t seem worth the risk.”

Ava didn’t turn away from her study of the distant storefront. “You can hang back, if you want,” she said. She’d be damned if she was going to turn away now. 

“You know I’m not going to do that.” 

She almost smiled at the gentle affront in his voice, but the expression was wiped clean off her face when he caught her elbow. That simple touch, that one narrow point of contact, sizzled through her in an overwhelming wave of _need_ and _revulsion_ and _fear_. Not that there was anything about Preston that turned her stomach; she just still didn’t feel human enough to accept even the most innocent touch. She felt raw, inside. She felt wounded.

Running scared from burrow to burrow like some kind of animal. Hunted, haunted. _Fuck._

Ava jerked free. Preston made an apologetic face, hand lifted palm-up before dropping to his rifle again. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I wasn’t thinking.” Then, back to business like always, “But I’ve got to ask: why is _this_ a priority target? There’s nothing but ferals and old crap in there.”

“I’m looking for something,” Ava said. 

“What?”

 _Myself_. But there was no way someone like Preston would get that. Hell, she wasn’t entirely sure _she_ understood. All she knew was her legs ached from constant unaccustomed exercise, muscles quaking and popping like hot kernels beneath her skin. Her stomach was twisted up into Gordian knots. She _lived_ that fine line between fight or flight. The truth was, she’d been running on fumes for weeks now, locked in pure survival mode: eat, sleep, drink, kill. Mostly kill.

And she couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it anymore.

It had all started two days ago, back in Sanctuary. They’d just returned from their latest mission sore and rad-sick enough that Ava’d barely bothered to kick free of her boots before she was crawling into bed. Dreams chased her through half the night. Memories from the old world, revelations from the new. Her naked skin leathery as a ghoul’s as she posed for dirty pictures, smiling a crack-toothed smile as bits and pieces of her flaked away.

Crazy what exhaustion could do to a person.

But when she rose from that stained mattress and spotted herself in a fragment of broken glass, the sight had been enough to make her go still. Jesus, she barely recognized herself. Dust and other people’s blood spattered a vault suit that had once been skin-tight. It hung looser now, the last baby weight whittled away by hard living. Her black hair was twisted back into a snarled rats nest. Her lips were cracked, her face pale save for violet shadows blooming beneath her eyes. She looked…

Gutted. Like a freak show mirror of herself. Frail in a way that made her heart pound double-time in her chest, because a frail woman wouldn’t be able to survive out here. A frail woman would never be able to blaze her way through nuclear annihilation and _find Shaun_.

She’d met her own eyes in that dirty glass and bit the inside of her mouth, hating the evidence of how little she’d been able to adapt to her new world. She’d be _lucky_ to be that ghoul in her dreams—that was the thought that kept echoing in her head. A bridge between _before_ and _after_ , full of spit and vinegar and a fire to keep going no matter the cost.

She’d _used_ to have that kind of fire in her. Hellcat—wasn’t that what Nate sometimes jokingly called her? Reaching up to touch her filthy hair, meeting those haunted dark eyes, Ava had taken a good, hard look at the wreck the end of the world had made of her. She faced down the wraith that she’d become.

Then, chin lifting, shoulders squaring, she’d tucked the corners of her cracked lips up into something resembling a smile and murmured: “Well. Fuck _this_ then.”

And now she was here, days later, on some quest to find herself, like a knight in a storybook. She shifted her own gun and tipped her head toward the storefront, moving with silent patience. She remembered parking her powder blue Chevy in this lot and heading inside countless times over the years. If she didn’t have those memories seared into her brain, she’d never have recognized the place now.

Despite his (understandable) concerns, Preston didn’t protest again. He fell in step behind her, hat tipped low, rifle buzzing. Ava cast him a quick glance before shuffling into a clearer line of sight. There was movement inside the store—ferals littering the torn linoleum like lazing cats. One lifted its head just as she began to line up her first shot.

 _The key to good aim is patience_ , Nate always liked to say. He loved taking her out to the range with buddies from the VA and show off how good he still was in every way that mattered: firearms, hand-to-hand, stealth. He showed off by teaching her a few moves—like she was a show dog or something—and Ava did his ego a favor by not letting on just how quickly she was picking it all up. He would have been mortified to know his soft lawyer wife could double his accuracy at three times the distance.

 _Funny_ , she thought as she drew in a steady breath. Aimed. _All this time, Nate was getting me ready for this moment_. Even if he would have died before letting her take point.

Ava tightened her finger on the trigger.

 _Splat!_ The feral’s head exploded like a ripe cantaloupe, painting the floor in red. A score of heads jerked up at the sound, the soft hiss of the ghouls rising into snarls as they clawed their way up. Ava swung her gun to find the next target, forcing back the still-instinctive fear as she begun to pick them off. Two, three, four… Preston grunted and sent a stream of energy toward one of the bastards, hitting it square in the chest.

“Good shot,” Ava said, grabbing her shotgun as the first of the ghouls staggered out into the parking lot. She had it cocked and ready, stomach giving a lurch at the first _boom_.

The feral staggered back, toppling head over feet in a near-perfect backflip. The next was already at its heels, lunging for her. Ava cursed and dug in her heels, catching it right in the face. The soft patter of blood felt like rain, only _hot_ and stinking of decay, and she grimaced as a few drops landed perilously close to her eyes.

“General,” Preston warned, firing off another shot. Another.

The pack was descending en masse—a wall of clawing hands and snarling faces and horror show terror. She’d always hated scary movies. She’d never figured she’d purposefully wade her way into one. “Got it,” Ava said, firing again and again. When a ghoul got too close, she swung her shotgun around and slammed it into its face, caving in its skull. When another swiped its claws across her, catching in the grooves of her makeshift armor, she twisted and drove her booted foot down on its thigh, relishing the _crack_ of bone and its inhuman scream before she swung her gun down and put it out of its misery.

It was funny how easy killing came to her now that it was all she had.

Finally, the last shot rang out. Ava lowered her gun, breath coming in shallow pants. The once-familiar parking lot and storefront were littered with wizened grey bodies. Blood soaked her hands and the front of her suit; she ducked her face to wipe her cheek against her shoulder.

“Think we got them all,” Preston said, sounding dubious. There always seemed to be one or two stragglers.

Ava kept her shotgun drawn as she headed into the store. “We’ll see,” she said. She had to nudge aside a feral’s body to get in, boots crunching on shattered glass and old leaves. The neat little aisles she remembered were toppled like dominos now, and most of whatever had been in stock was long looted or disintegrated, but Ava moved unerringly to the back stock room. She waited just long enough for Preston to take up guard before she crouched before the door, digging out a bobby pin and jimmying the lock…remembering the way she used to pick the locks to the old apartment at college and sneak into Nate’s room late at night, waking him with biting kisses and a wicked laugh.

Almost, almost—there! Ava pushed open the door with a pleased noise, beginning to slip the bobby pin back into her pouch as she straightened. She paused mid-motion, however, and frowned down at the twisted black metal.

Considered it for what felt like a long, long time.

Preston shifted behind her. “Is something wrong?” he finally asked.

“No,” Ava said. She only hesitated a moment longer before setting her jaw and defiantly twisting the metal back into something resembling its original shape. Reaching up, she tugged at the knotted twine holding the mess of her hair in place, pulling until the whole mass tumbled free. Letting the twine drop, Ava stepped into the back room, finger-combing out a few of the worst tangles before shaping the front sweep into something resembling a curl.

Lips quirking, she slid the newly reclaimed bobby pin into place. Then she looked around.

The beauty store hadn’t been the most luxurious in Boston, but it got the job done for more than a few suburban wives with the all-important appearances to maintain. Most of the stock had been on the selves when the bombs fell, but as Ava poked around the room she’d literally killed to claim, she found a few bits and pieces of what she needed. A brush. A bar of soap. More bobby pins. _Lipstick_.

“Thank you baby Jesus,” Ava murmured, crouching as she dug through the old makeup bag. Most of it was useless, but when she uncapped the gold tube and twisted the end, pure blood red appeared, still glossy and familiar and _comforting_ after all this time. As strange as it was, this was going to be her touchstone. This was her strength. This was how she was going to remain human.

The world had ended, fine. She could adapt. She could use the skills she’d picked up over the years to survive, to make things better, to find her son and make her husband’s killers pay. And she would do it while keeping one foot squarely planted in her own personal past—in the woman she used to be, inside and out. 

The apocalypse didn’t have to break her.

“What’s that?” Preston asked, leaning over her shoulder.

Ava opened a compact and checked her blood-spattered face. Feeling almost defiant, she wiped herself clean with the edge of her suit, then pursed her lips, drawing on the old vamp-red smile with something like a flourish. The change was instantaneous and something far deeper than cosmetic. She felt all at once more settled in herself and her place in this world. She felt—

Powerful.

“War paint.” Wasn’t that what they’d used to jokingly call it?

“Huh,” Preston said. “Who are you going to war with?”

Ava stood, makeup bag clutched in one hand, shotgun in the other. She tilted her chin at him, watching him through the dark sweep of her lashes, and nearly laughed at the way he immediately looked down with a flush. Yeah—she still had that old hellion in her. “Anyone who gets in my way.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some misogynistic language courtesy of some Gunners.

The Third Rail was a bit of a shithole, but it was _his_ kind of shithole. Dark, dusty, a little dangerous, filled to the brim with people looking to make shady deals in back corners. He’d staked it out as the best place to find work now that he was free of the Gunners.

Of course, he hadn’t figured on the Gunners being stupid enough to literally come bumbling into his new turf.

“Aw, come on,” he said, lounging back in a cracked leather chair and trying not to eye his rifle propped up in the corner. He had to keep reminding himself they were in Goodneighbor, which meant Hancock’s rules were strictly enforced. That gave him a certain feeling of security…but then, he hadn’t made it into his 20s by ever letting himself feel particularly _secure_ , had he? “You’re ruining the ambiance.”

“The come again?” Barnes demanded. The bigger of the two thugs was practically bristling with weapons; shiny, showy things that looked like they cost more caps than they were worth. MacCready tried not to sneer too much. A little attitude was just fine—it was all part of the show. But he remembered what an ass Barnes could be about his _babies_. “You taking up talking gibberish, MacCready?”

He kicked back and crossed his hands behind his head, but only for a moment. As cool as he was pretty sure it made him look (and in his mind’s eye, yeah, it looked real fucking cool) he didn’t feel comfortable exposing his middle like that. But hey, slouching did the trick too, right? “Aw, suck my c- uh, whatever. It’s real English. Learned it from a book and everything.”

No point adding he’d taken to picking up books along his travels so he could try sounding smarter for his kid.

“Cut the shit, MacCready,” Winlock snarled. He was standing closer to the entrance of the VIP room, arms crossed, eyes beetle-small. Yeah. Yeah, Winlock was definitely the one to look out for. “We’re not here to _chat_.”

“Yeah? What’re you here for then? This is neutral ground, you know.” He added that last bit because…well, because he was sweating bullets no matter how cool he was trying to play it. Two against one wasn’t such bad odds, but he was much, much more comfortable with a whole lot more space between him and his targets. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to reach his rifle before he was full of more holes than a feral. “And in case you forgot, I’m not with the Gunners anymore.”

Just outside, in the main room, Magnolia was switching to another number. Deeper, bluesy, melancholy. Practically a fucking funeral dirge; MacCready grit his teeth and reminded himself he wasn’t the least bit superstitious.

“We’re not the ones in need of a reminder,” Winlock bit out, one hand drifting to the gun strapped to his side—and as much as MacCready tried to keep the spike of adrenaline off his face, he knew it had to be coming through loud and clear if that sly smirk was anything to go by. Well…hell. “In fact, I’m thinking you need something a little stronger than a reminder—don’t you, MacCready?”

So…what now? He subtly shifted closer to his rifle, wishing he’d kept it strapped to his side. But hey, how was he supposed to figure the Gunners would be stupid enough to ignore Mayor Hancock’s rules and come blazing after him? _No one_ went toe to toe with Hancock and lived to tell the tale.

“I’ve been told it can take a while to get stuff through my think skull,” he said, leaning forward in his seat.

Barnes snorted, slowly edging closer—around the side of the room, as if he and Winlock wanted to split MacCready’s focus. Shit, shit, were they really going for it? “Can’t say I’m surprised to find you in a dump like this, MacCready,” he said in an almost bored-sounding tone.

_Bite me_. “I was wondering how long it would take your bloodhounds to track me down.” It probably wasn’t wise to give the Gunners lip, but hell, it wasn’t like his situation could get any _worse_. “It’s been almost three months…don’t tell me you’re getting rusty.” 

Winlock bared his teeth in something someone far dumber than MacCready might mistake for a smile. _That hit him where he lives,_ MacCready thought, smug. “Should we take this outside?” MacCready added, keeping his voice dead even. He had a better shot at getting the jump on these two goons if they agreed. At least then he’d have his hands on his rifle.

“It ain’t like that,” Winlock said—sounding more than a little disappointed. “I’m just here to deliver a message.”

There was some movement in the doorway, but MacCready couldn’t worry about that now. If he was lucky, it was Third Rail security. And if he wasn’t lucky… He stood, eyes bouncing between Barnes and Winlock, watching the way they both tensed for their guns. MacCready tried to play it off, putting as much swagger into his step as he could as he moved forward to confront them. It also took him a few steps closer to his gun; his heart was pounding. “Like I said, I left the Gunners for good,” he said.

Winlock smirked and let his hand drop. Barnes stayed tensed, fingers drumming against the flashy silver at his side. “Yeah,” Winlock said. “I heard you.”

There was a _but_ there. He’d bet his left nut on it.

“ _But_ you’re still taking jobs in the Commonwealth,” Winlock added, and MacCready almost smiled. He’d watched goons like these two do their thing for long enough he could have written the script for them.

“Lemme guess: that isn’t going to work for you?”

Winlock narrowed his eyes. “That isn’t going to work for us.” Barnes just laughed, the idiot, and spat a stream of something brown and disgusting in the direction of MacCready’s rifle.

_Assholes_. “I don’t take orders from you,” he snapped, surprised at his own ruffled temper. So much for playing it cool. “Not anymore. So why don’t you take your girlfriend and walk out of here while you still can?”

_That_ got Barnes’s attention. He straightened, lips curling back to reveal an even row of rotting teeth. “ _What?_ ” he demanded. He made a very real grab for his gun, but his partner was there before he could yank it out of its harness, closing his fingers around Barnes’ wrist and shoving the piece back. “Winlock,” Barnes protested, “tell me we don’t have to listen to this shit.”

“ _Cool it_ ,” Winlock hissed. Then he looked back at MacCready. “Listen up, MacCready,” he said. “The only reason we haven’t filled your body full of bullets is that we don’t want a war with Goodneighbor.” He gave Barnes’ wrist one last, warning squeeze, then straightened. “See, we respect other people’s boundaries…we know how to play the game. It’s something you never learned.”

Well, _fuck that_. “Glad to have disappointed you,” he said with his best smirk.

Winlock chuckled even as Barnes growled. “You can play the tough guy all you want. But if we hear you’re still operating inside Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?”

“You finished?”

“Yeah,” Winlock said. “We’re finished. Come on, Barnes.” The two of them turned away, backs to MacCready, and he had a sudden wild thought: if he lunged for the gun _now_ , he could probably take at least one of them out before the other had time to draw. Hancock would have his balls on a platter, but _Christ_ , it would be good to have these goons off his back for good.

Of course, that didn’t mean more Gunners wouldn’t just replace them, and aw hell, it was probably just better to let sleeping dogs lie. He slumped back a little, shoulders rounding forward—until he realized Barnes and Winlock weren’t _leaving_. They’d frozen in the doorway, their way blocked by…someone. He couldn’t see over the solid wall they made.

“Outta our way,” Barnes spat, reflexively brainless as always.

Winlock, however, seemed…intrigued. “You looking for trouble, lady?”

There was a laugh—low, feminine. Like something from one of those old songs always playing over the radio. “I’m always looking for trouble.”

“Ah, Blue,” another woman said. “ _Maaaaybe_ we should just let these nice heavily armed men pass.”

“Shut your fucking gob, cunt,” Winlock said offhandedly. MacCready bristled behind him; even before he’d promised to watch the filth that came from his mouth, he’d hated that word. He slipped around the perimeter of the room, snagging his rifle and casually lifting it into place, Winlock’s fat head right in his crosshairs…just in case. Winlock just kept going. “I was talking to the lady here. What do you say, sweetheart: you looking to drop the girl and hire on a real man?”

There came that laugh again, low and rich and underlain with pure steel. MacCready’s brows were arching; he couldn’t get a good view of her, but if this lady looked as good as she sounded, no wonder Winlock was pouring out what little excuse he had for charm. “If I were looking to hire on a _real man_ ,” she said, “why would I be talking to _you_? Excuse me,” she added, pushing past the two Gunners bold as you please.

Barnes snagged her arm, whipping her around with a snarled, “ _The fuck you say?_ ” But she had the gun drawn from his own holster in one smooth motion, cocked and pointed square between his eyes. The other woman—dark-haired, dressed in a newsboy cap—had her gun leveled at Winlock barely an instant later, as if the two women had planned out this dance in advance.

Never one to be outdone, MacCready made a show of cocking his rifle, trying to make the _click_ loud in the ensuing silence. _Come on, asshole_ , he thought. _Just give us an excuse._

Winlock slowly held up his hands. “We don’t want any trouble… _here_. We’re going.”

“But what about my piece?” Barnes demanded, even as he followed Winlock in slowly edging out of the room.

“Take it out of the cunt’s hide later.”

The dame—back to him, but curvy enough in her blue vault suit to make his eyes dip despite himself—didn’t lower the gun. “I look forward to your best attempt,” she said, with just enough bite to have MacCready grinning. Barnes clearly didn’t like being shown up by a couple of _dames_ —he always was a stupid shit—but Winlock dragged him out with a few muttered words, and both the women lowered their guns as if by secret code.

MacCready dropped his rifle just a few seconds later, grin still in place. Whatever she was looking for, he was already lowering his asking price by 25. Something about her screamed level-headed competence—maybe he could even talk her into…

No. No use getting ahead of himself.

“Pretty ballsy move,” MacCready said, setting aside the rifle and crossing his arms. The woman in the newsboy cap was looking him over, curious. The dame, the clear boss between the two, still had her back to him as she examined Barnes’ gun. “Especially for, uh…”

His words trailed off, dried up, left his head wide open and empty as the Wastes themselves when she turned. It was… _Christ_ , it was like someone had gone rooting around in his fantasies and built her from the ground up based on everything he’d ever thought of as _beautiful_. It was uncanny.

“Especially for what?” she asked, cocking a perfectly arched black brow. “Women?”

“Uh…” Shit. She was a little taller than him, a little older than him, and curvy in a way women just _weren’t_ outside the old spank mags. Like she hadn’t spent a lifetime of malnourishment and starvation whittling her down to sinew and bones. Her vault suit was zipped up nice and modest, but there was no hiding breasts like _those_ , or the way her waist nipped in before flaring out into hips that had his mouth watering. 

“Women have balls too, you know,” she said. When she shifted, that suit hugged her curves nice and tight, and holy shit, he was getting turned on, what the fuck, what the actual _fuck_. “They’re just a little higher up.”

MacCready jerked his gaze up to meet hers. _Yeah, and I’m trying my best not to notice,_ he didn’t say, but it was a real near thing. She had dark eyes, almost black, lined with some kind of thin black paint. She had the longest lashes he’d ever seen outside a Brahmin, and hair that looked like it smelled like Heaven, all rolled back and neatly pinned in some…fancy… _something_. Her skin was the kind of soft and unweathered you only saw on vault dwellers, and her lips—

Her lips were so damn _familiar_. And not just, _oh hey, I’ve jerked off to the idea of a dame like you all my life_ familiar. Honest-to-fucking-God _familiar_ , as if he’d seen her somewhere before. As if he knew that deep red, that perfect bow, that slightly fuller lower lip. Those gleaming white teeth when she smirked at him, flashing clean and whole and straight the way _no_ Wastelander or even Vault dweller he’d ever seen was able to get.

_Who the hell are you, lady?_ he didn’t demand, floored, turned on, turned around, confused and out of sorts and all kinds of…interested.

Damn it. He needed to pull his shit together, and fast.

“Look lady,” he tried, forcing his traitorous mind firmly back on track. “If you’re preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you’ve got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun…then maybe we can talk.”

“You look like you can handle yourself pretty well,” she said. “It might be I’m needing someone to hire on. My friend here has obligations in the city, and I need someone to watch my back.”

That wouldn’t be any kind of hardship…but aw hell, he really needed to stop thinking like that. “Seeing the way you make _friends_ , it sure looks like you could. But how about you? How do I know I won’t end up with a bullet in my back?”

There came that smile again, coupled with the long sweep of her lashes. He felt his cheeks heating despite all efforts to keep his cool. He had _definitely_ seen her before, even if he couldn’t place where. Dancing somewhere, maybe? No, classier. Singing? Was she some kind of performer? He might’ve stumbled across propos for her act somewhere. Whatever it was, the way she looked at him, smiled at him, stood there studying him with those dark dark eyes and those long long lashes and that _mouth_ —it made him break out into a sweat.

“You don’t,” she said. “That’s part of the risk, right?”

The other woman—the one with some kind of mysterious business in the city—snorted at that. MacCready shifted uncomfortably. He was starting to have the sinking feeling these women already had the upper hand on him, and he hadn’t even gotten to brass tacks yet. “Can’t argue with that,” he muttered. Even so, his mind was already made up. “I’ll tell you what. Price is 250 caps…up front. And there’s no room for bargaining. What do you say?”

“Oh, I’ve heard _that_ before,” the other woman murmured, voice shivery with laughter.

“ _Piper_ ,” the boss said, bemused. Then she cut her eyes back to MacCready, except…now she was kinda looking at him from beneath her lashes, and the effect was, uh, well. It wasn’t _bad,_ he could say that much. “Everything’s negotiable. Would you take 200?”

He should have fought back, made her haggle for it, but then she smiled again—warmer, a little teasing, like she knew exactly what she was doing and was having fun doing it—and he couldn’t help a bark of laughter. Wow, this one was a firecracker. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said, “but you just bought yourself an extra gun.”

“And what should I call my extra gun?” she teased, laughing with him.

“MacCready,” he said. Then, even though he couldn’t say why, “Robert Joseph MacCready. You know. At your service and all that shi—stuff.”

She cocked her head, a dark coil of hair brushing her shoulder. He couldn’t say why the way she looked him over made his heart pound out of rhythm, but boy howdy did it ever. “Nice to meet you, MacCready. You can call me Ava.”

_Danger. Danger. Danger_. Everything in him was screaming that a woman who looked like this, who sounded like this, who could just _handle_ men like Barnes and Winlock and, oh hell, himself, with some kind of whipcrack smarts? She was _dangerous_. And he better work to keep his distance. “I can call you boss,” he said firmly, more to himself than her. Whether she’d stepped outta his teenage fantasies or not, she was still his employer and he needed to keep his eyes up, his head clear, and all his parts safely tucked away, or he was in for a whole lot of hurt. Guys like him never ended well with dames like her. “That good with you?”

The smile gentled a little, as if she could read his thoughts blaring like a foghorn in his head. He looked away quickly. Tried hard not to blush. “Of course, MacCready,” she said. “That sounds just fine.”

“Well. All right then, boss…let’s get the heck out of here.”


	5. Chapter 5

He shouldn’t have let her talk him down to 200.

Hell. He should’ve held firm until she offered _2000_. More. Because if he had to stay put and watch her creep into another nest of raiders, he would…whatever, have a heart attack or an aneurism or fits or something.

The point being, just a couple weeks on the road and the boss was already driving him crazy.

And he couldn’t _take it_ anymore.

“Okay, that’s it,” MacCready finally said. Her hand was halfway to the butt of her shotgun; she paused, one brow arching in that way that always seemed to get his stomach buzzing like he’d swallowed a hive of angry bees.

But hey, he was angry too. So angry he ignored the jittering and crossed his arms, scowling over at her. “I hate to break it to you, boss,” he said, “but your tactics _suck_.”

She let her hand drop. “Is that so?” she murmured. There wasn’t an answering heat in her voice, which he guessed was good. MacCready didn’t actually want to piss her off, no matter how dang agitated he felt. They had a good thing going so far. She was fearless, diving head-first into sorry messes any sane man would walk away from. She never seemed to say _no_ to someone in need, and even if he couldn’t stomach the way she liked to tiptoe right smack into the middle of a war zone instead of taking safer potshots from a distance, he couldn’t argue that her method wasn’t effective. The two of them had left a read ocean in their wake. It was kinda fun.

But what _wasn’t_ fun was staying behind and watching her through his scope as she slipped around mines and over tripwires, practically getting close enough for the first raider to feel the kiss of her body heat before she raised her gun and pulled the trigger.

She was efficient and gifted and luckier than the devil, but that _wasn’t what rifles were for_ , and MacCready never figured himself for much of a nervous Nellie, but if he had to hold his breath and hope one more time, he was going to keel over.

Also? Apparently he’d just been sitting there stewing, because his face felt hot enough to let off steam and her other brow was slowly rising. _Shit_.

“Look,” he blurted, snatching his hat off and dragging his fingers through his hair. “I’m not saying you’re shi- uh, crap at what you do.”

“But?” she pressed. Ava sat back on her heels, watching him with a focused interest that made his insides roil again.

“ _But_ ,” MacCready continued, slower this time. Comingled worry and frustration or not, it was never a good idea to pick at the edges of someone’s gunplay. He’d learned the hard way some time back that there was a fine, fine line between constructive criticism and being a mouthy prick—and the softer a person’s ago, the smaller that line was. “I just… You got that thing for show, or what?”

Ava blinked, frowning, but she didn’t look offended. That was good. “Come again?” she said. They were hunkered down behind a bit of broken wall, a decent sniping distance from the raider camp. It wasn’t near far enough to be anything close to relaxed, but the way she looked out him—laser-focused, intent, intense, _interested_ —MacCready could’ve sworn they were somewhere off alone. A snatch of open land or an abandoned farmhouse or a bedroom…

_Hold up. Don’t go there._

He dragged his fingers through his hair again, then slapped the hat back on his head. “You use that thing like it’s a shotgun,” he said. “Kicking down the fu-freaking door and blazing up the place. That’s not how you want to do things if you’re all that interested in breathing. Which, fine, whatever. Get yourself killed if that’s what you want. But maybe you could not do it under my watch?”

He hated the way his voice went strangled on the words, giving way too much away. He hated that he _cared._

Because two weeks in, and he was already invested in keeping this crazy woman alive. It had happened _fast_ , too, which wasn’t like him. Like a punch he hadn’t seen coming: sitting around the campfire on the outskirts of the city, barely a two days’ trek together. They were brand new, still feeling each other out and not comfortable enough to take turns being on guard, and he kept stealing looks at her across the fire and thinking _wow_. Just… _wow_. Squirming in his seat with an uncomfortable awareness that she was the kind of beautiful that just shouldn’t exist anymore, as if the war had forgotten all about her. Glamorous and perfect and polished and intimidating.

He’d been thinking about that—about that intimidation, and what it meant that a woman’s beauty had him as uneasy as any man’s show of strength—when he’d let slip one of his old favorite sayings, back from the Lamplight days. It used to have the other kids sniggering because, well, they’d all been kids, but he’d outgrown that childish shit ages ago.

But Ava? Ava choked on her mouthful of water, _snorting_ laughter. Actual honest-to-God snorts, loud as all hell, one hand clamped over her red mouth and eyes squeezed shut, just braying away, and okay, yeah, that was the moment. That was when he’d figured the two of them would get along just fine.

And they had, they were, all the way up until his stomach lining couldn’t take it anymore.

“MacCready?” Ava said now in a gentle voice.

“It’s none of my business how you like to fight,” he mumbled, embarrassed. Shit, here he went showing all his hands again. What was it about this woman that made everyone around her so very eager to bare their throats? Maybe he was the one who should be worried. “Never mind. You wanna use that rifle as a shotgun, you go right ahead. You want to swing it like a bat? Fine. Whatever. I’ve got your back. You’re not paying me to run my mouth.”

She nudged closer, shoulder brushing against his, knees knocking together. When he glanced over at her (fighting against a flush that just wouldn’t quit), there wasn’t an ounce of judgement _or_ triumph in her eyes. Usually, in his limited experience, women who looked like her? Didn’t exactly love listening to guys like him.

But she was just looking at him with a little twist to her mouth. More than that—for him, at least—she really was listening. Like she gave a shit and everything.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Will you show me?”

He blinked, startled, but Ava was already moving up onto her knees. She reached back for her rifle, unslinging it and holding it the way he’d come to recognize—like she was about to blast a man’s face off. Wrong, all wrong. “Will you show me?” she asked again. “Handguns, shotguns, I remember those from the range. By the time I’d picked this up, I was too used to calling the shots to ask for a demonstration. Shh,” she added, lips quirking. “Don’t tell Preston how many gaps I have in my wasteland education. He may demote me.”

“Why’re you asking me then?” he said. He rose up next to her, hesitating for only a moment before reaching to adjust her grip on the gun. He had this crazy image playing like an old moving picture in his head of him wrapping his arms around her; chest-to-back, his hands over hers; breath hot on her neck, the subtle scent of her hair filling his lungs; intimacy flaring hot in his belly. _Shit_. Yeah, that was not happening. “Not so embarrassing to ask a dummy like me?”

When he moved her hands, adjusted them, they gripped the rifle just right. It was amazing the way she picked things up and ran with them. Intimidating too, but not…not in a bad way. He wasn’t sure exactly what the feeling was bubbling up inside him when he leaned back and gave her the once-over, nodding in satisfaction over the way she was braced to mimic his usual pose. Whatever it was, he didn’t plan on looking it over too closely.

He unslung his own gun. She’d been quiet so long, he’d pretty much figured she wasn’t going to answer.

“I trust you,” Ava finally said, eyes locked straight ahead. _Focused_ already, as if she weren’t kneeling there flinging pulse grenades at him. Just blowing up his world at the foundations. “All right, shall we try to pick off the guards on the walls first? Tell me what adjustments to make as we go.”

He couldn’t look at her. In fact, he could barely see his own hands fumbling to load his rifle. _I trust you_ , like it was that easy. _Christ_. “Sure,” he said gruffly, voice thick enough it sounded like a surly growl. Like he was mad or something. She glanced at him, startled, but he just swung up his gun and focused on finding his first mark. “You’re the boss.”


	6. Chapter 6

Ava always took second watch.

When pressed, she liked to say she enjoyed waiting for the sun to rise. She was an early bird. She preferred the heavy stillness of night. She was a great big perv who liked to watch her companions sleep. (That last one had worked to keep Preston from asking ever, ever again.) The real reason—the one she kept locked up inside, along with memories of Nate and the piercing ache in her chest whenever she imagined she heard a baby’s cry—was, as usual, a hell of a lot simpler…and so very fucking complex.

She always took the dog’s watch because she didn’t want to be vulnerable. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Bedding down once they struck up camp, she could curl up in whatever rags they happened to find and keep her perfectly-made-up face tucked against the fold of her arm. When she was nudged awake around one, it was all still there—smudged, perhaps, imperfect, but comforting. And then, as her companion bedded down and drifted off for the second half of the night, she had a few precious hours to tug free the bobby pins, scrub her body with sand and citrus oil, clean her face.

_Relax_ , even as she carefully watched the horizon.

It was the one time she felt like she could _breathe_. Stripped clean, raw as an open wound, she sat with her gun nestled in her arms and felt the wind stirring the ends of her long, loose hair. The world was so still at three in the morning, locked in that quiet hush like an indrawn breath, and for weeks on end Ava managed to convince herself that she was slowly healing.

Until the stars began to fade and her mental clock wound down the minutes to sunrise. Then, rising quickly, she started the whole process all over again. Out came the carefully wrapped makeup bag. On went the foundation, the powder she’d bought off a Diamond City vendor, the dark wings of her eyeliner, the trademark red lips. Each was applied quickly, meticulously, as the night sky faded to a bruised violet.

No matter how late she pushed it, she always seemed to have just finished pinning up her hair in its familiar Victory curls when even the earliest riser began to stir—and there she was, the sole survivor of Vault 111, ready with a _good morning_ smile and not a hint of the demons that raged within her breast.

It was just another piece of armor; it was just enough buffer between her and her new friends. Even Preston seemed to have mostly forgotten the half-wild thing she used to be, but Ava didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t dare. She had to remain vigilant, always. She had to watch herself. She had to _be careful_. This tie to her past was her touchstone, yes, but somewhere along the way, it had also become her armor.

Except…

Well.

She’d let him touch her, hadn’t she?

There just beyond the Raider camp, their shoulders had brushed, their knees had knocked together. And then his hands had been on her, adjusting the way she held her gun, as if that flare of contact was the simplest thing in the world. They’d only been together a few weeks then, but it already felt like a lifetime, and Ava had made herself lean in first as a test to see whether she still could.

And oh, oh God, she’d forgotten how good something as simple as _touch_ could be.

It had been quick, there and gone again, but it had burned through her like lit gasoline, and the last few weeks after that one encounter had been spent _actually_ watching him sleep—whether that made her a great big perv or not. Knees up, arms locked around her shins, gun nearby and face scrubbed clean, she’d felt like a teenager again, stomach tying up in intricate knots as she tried to puzzle out what these conflicting feelings could mean. She trusted him. She was afraid of him. She liked him. She didn’t understand him.

Robert Joseph MacCready was a product of his world the way Ava could never be, and yet she couldn’t help but think—as hours dragged into days, into weeks, into a _month_ —that out of everything she’d stumbled across in this nightmare of a world, _he_ was somehow the closest she’d managed to come to home.

Crazy. Impossible. And yet Ava found herself more and more letting that internal clock wind down, playing chicken with the sunrise, and thinking…maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to let someone like him get just a little closer.


	7. Chapter 7

His body felt like supermutants had been using him for a trampoline and his mouth was fuzzy with all the dirty socks he must’ve been gargling in his sleep.

All in all, just another new day in the Commonwealth.

“Arrrghle,” MacCready muttered, curling tighter on the filthy mattress. His hat was tipped over his eyes and if he reached out, he could feel the reassuring weight of his rifle. The early morning air was chilly, winter beginning to press in, but Ava had lit a fire at his back, and its warmth was, fuck, pretty much perfect.

It’d been the sound of flint striking that had woken him, he figured. Or maybe the first pop of the flames. Funny that he’d gotten so comfortable with her in the month and a half they’d been traveling together that he no longer startled awake at the sound of her footfall.

Funny-weird, not funny-haha. God knew MacCready wasn’t laughing.

“Mmph,” he said, rubbing at his nose and slowly pushing himself up onto an elbow. The sky was going lavender about the edges, stars all but gone. Soon enough, light would break and they’d be setting off. “Why’d you let me sleep in?”

“It’s Sunday,” Ava said, as if that meant anything. Sometimes she did that—made weird references or responded to things in ways that just didn’t make sense. _Crazy_. That’s what he’d told himself at the beginning, anyway. Just another crazy scavver who’d let the Commonwealth get to her.

Except that seemed less and less likely the longer he knew her. In fact, occasional weirdness aside, she was the first steady thing he’d butted up against ever since he’d lost Lucy, and oh hell, he was not going to just lay here and pick over _that_ old scab. Not now.

Instead, he rolled over and sat up, pushing his hat back into place. “You got breakfast going?” he asked. “Or do you want me to…uh.” The words, already slow with sleep, dried up to a trickle as he got his first good look at her, and all he could think—the _only_ thing he could think, blaring like a warning klaxon in his skull was— _fuck, she’s pretty._

Pretty, not beautiful, at least like this. MacCready’d be damned if he could even explain the difference, but the boss on her normal days was all slick charm and polish. She was a performer in every way, a real _dame_ like they used to have in the old days, and he could admire her and desire her and okay, yeah, secretly get his rocks off to the thought of her without feeling too weird about it. She was like one of those beauties in the spank mags in that way, perfect and untouchable and kinda intimidating.

Now, here, completely out of the blue, she was someone else entirely.

_Soft_. That’s the word his brain kept circling back to. She looked _soft_ somehow, as if she couldn’t shoot three raiders dead before the first grabbed for his gun. Her black hair was longer than he’d figured, let loose from its usual whole…thing, style, whatever…and falling around her shoulders. It still had a little curl to it, coiling near where the ends brushed her breasts, which, Christ, _don’t look_.

He jerked his eyes up, flushed and flat-footed, only to meet her smile. Her lips looked different without the red. No less full, but a whole lot more approachable. Like a man could kiss them if he knew the way to ask. Her lashes weren’t quite as dark and her brows didn’t do that perfect arch-y thing. Even her hands, coiled around a chipped mug, looked like something that wouldn’t be too out of place intertwined with his.

The thought was nuts; maybe _he_ was the one going crazy. Because, because…because a naked face didn’t mean a damn thing, and it wasn’t suddenly okay to think maybe he really would like to lean over the fire and kiss her, and fine yes okay he liked her well enough, but that didn’t translate into… He wasn’t allowed to… She couldn’t just…

His heart was hammering in his chest; what the fuck was wrong with him?

“Huh?” MacCready said, blinking stupidly when he realized she was waiting for him to say something.

“I said, there’s some radstag left over if you wanted to heat it up.” The boss…Ava…set aside her mug and stood, long sweep of her hair falling forward in a dark waterfall. MacCready watched, frozen in place; she may as well have morphed into a Deathclaw for how hard his insides were clamoring. “I need to get ready.”

He twisted around, watching as she went to riffle through her bag, then pulled out a small pouch. It unrolled easily, revealing little brushes, tubes, a small circular container with a mirror on the inside. “Uh,” he said when he realized he hadn’t actually responded. “Sure. Yeah. Wait. No. No thanks.”

She glanced at him once, then went back to what she was doing. Ava dipped her finger in a bit of creamy-colored liquid, then dotted it on her face. She began to smooth it out slowly until it disappeared, blending against her skin. MacCready watched, at first trying to pretend he wasn’t—poking at the fire and ostentatiously checking his rifle. But when she pulled out a twisted rag and began to dust powder across her cheeks, MacCready gave up pretending he was anything but fascinated and moved across the camp to join her.

Ava looked up, her skin near-flawless again. She raised her brows in question.

“Never seen all that done before,” he admitted, settling into an easy crouch across from her. “Only the really rich ladies can afford paint anyway.”

“And you’ve never gotten a rich one out of her girdle?” Ava teased.

He snorted. “If that’s a word for fancy underpants, nah. I’m a little more low-rent than that.”

She just shook her head, using the cloth to blend in the powder. It seemed to disappear against her face; he wondered why the fuck she bothered putting it on if she was just going to wipe it all off. Ava carefully tapped any loose powder off the rag and back into its little disk, then picked up a pencil and started to…draw on herself? Huh. “You’re making me nervous, staring like that,” she said, throaty amusement wending its way through her voice.

MacCready flushed. “Uh, I can go fuck off if you want. It’s just…weird. New. Not weird, but new.”

Ava shrugged a shoulder, focusing more on a little mirror than him as she drew dark lines about her eyes. “I was teasing. I don’t mind. I like having you near, anyway. Tell me some b.s. story and I’ll pretend like I believe you.”

His stomach tightened as he shifted and looked down, pleasure blooming slow and undeniable deep in his belly. _I like having you near, anyway_. Shit, he needed to get a grip on himself. “B.S.? Come on, boss, that cuts deep. Look at you, sitting there giving me some of that…uh, what’s-it-called? When you say sh-stuff that ain’t true and hurt a man’s image? That law stuff you were going on about last rad-storm.”

She actually laughed at that, just a little snort underlying the music of it. He refused to let the sound warm him. “Slander,” she said. “And I know for a fact you take it as a compliment.”

“Slander. Now there’s a word I’ve got to send to Duncan.”

“Who?”

MacCready glanced over, heart giving an unexpected lurch when he realized her eyes were fixed on him. She was mostly made up again, face morphed from soft and pretty to that ball-busting beautiful he was slowly starting to get used to…but her hair was still flowing softly around her shoulders and the quizzical look in her eyes made his stomach clench.

Shit. He hadn’t meant to bring up Duncan. Not yet. Not until he was _certain_ of her. “It’s just fancy, that’s all I’m saying. So what exactly is a lawyer, and how’d you get started doing it? Was it, what, being the mayor of a town?” _The law_. That had to be how she got so good with guns, right? “Is that where Preston found you and promoted you up to General?”

“Not exactly.” She dropped her gaze, refocusing on re-packing the various soft brushes and powders and what-have-yous. Her red lips twisted into something almost sad. “I’ll tell you someday, when we’ve got nothing but time to kill. Today’s not that day,” she added. 

MacCready watched as she deftly began twisting her hair into neat plaits. “Oh yeah?” he said. “And why’s that?”

The look she shot him was pure wickedness. “Because today’s the day we kill someone else,” she said, rising to her feet. She pinned the black waves into place, all at once pulled together again—the boss again. It was funny how his brain was separating out those two different women so clearly:

The boss and Ava. One was a badass set on rolling across the Commonwealth leaving the world on fire in her wake. The other…

He wasn’t sure yet what to make of the other yet—only that she made his heart hurt in some indefinable way.

“You got anyone in mind?” he joked, trying to swallow back the roiling confusion rising in his gullet. But then she leaned in and _clasped his shoulder_ as she passed, touching him as carefully, as deliberately as if he were a nuclear bomb that could detonate beneath her fingers. Like that simple touch was somehow dangerous.

Hell. From the way it made his whole body sing like a struck chord, maybe it was.

“Let me let you in on a little secret, MacCready,” the boss said, fingers lingering against the rough weave of his jacket before she pulled away—clenching and unclenching her fist as if she’d been shocked by the contact too. “I’ve _always_ got someone in mind.”


	8. Chapter 8

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” MacCready muttered, shifting his grip on the rifle as he craned his neck to get a better look at the overpass. Somewhere up there, moving in the Gunner’s nest without a hint of fear, was Winlock and Barnes.

It felt bizarre to be so close to them again. It felt…good to think the boss was willing to run them down like dogs for him.

For _him_. Shit. No one had done anything just for him in a long, long time.

“You backing out, Mac?” the boss asked, glancing over. She’d taken lately to trying out nicknames on him, searching for one that fit. _Mac_ was the latest, though he could already tell she wasn’t quite settled on it. He couldn’t quite say how he knew—how he’d gotten to where he could read the subtle changes in her face—but he figured it was just a matter of time before she tried something else.

Whatever. No skin off his nose. And weirdly…he guessed he kinda liked it. It went hand in hand with her volunteering to put some holes in the Gunners who were giving him hell. They were constantly blurring the lines between employee and employer now, and MacCready _knew_ he should protest—it was safer to keep those walls in place—but… Hell.

He’d never been good at denying himself something he really wanted, and crazy as it was, he was starting to think having the boss’s friendship was something he not just wanted—he _needed_.

She arched a perfect black brow at his silence and MacCready looked down, flushing. _Damn it_. There was also the fact that she kept sending his mind spinning off into weird corners of fantasy, and, yeah, no, not thinking about that now. “Nah,” he said, pretending to be real fascinated by the workings of his gun. As if he hadn’t already checked it and re-checked it since they’d decided on this mad plan. “I’m in for the long haul, boss. Let’s give them hell.”

“My favorite thing to do,” she said. He could hear the wicked grin in her words; his stomach twisted in response. “Follow me.”

He waited as she crept forward, gun cocked and body kept low to the ground. The blue of her vault suit left little to the imagination when she was like this, tightening around an ass that was, uh, well, pretty fucking spectacular—not that he was looking.

Okay, shit, he was looking. He had eyes, didn’t he? But he wasn’t letting himself mean anything by it. Setting his jaw, MacCready followed just a few steps behind her, carefully sweeping his rifle back and forth as he studied the crumbling pillars and _not_ the way her hips moved. They’d already taken out the nest of lookouts down below, and his pockets jingled with the sound of the caps and ammo they’d lifted from their corpses. If the Gunners up above had as rich of a haul—and if they survived long enough to take it in—then he’d soon have a hell of a lot more to send through the caravans to Duncan.

Even better, the Gunners wouldn’t have their best bloodhounds on his trail, and he could finally part ways with the boss and run his merc business in peace.

…and _fuck_ , but he wasn’t going to think about the way the mere idea of that sent his stomach tangling up in knots. Not now, anyway.

She glanced back, wing-tipped eyes meeting his, and gestured toward a lift. MacCready nodded, following its lines all the way up to the Gunner’s nest above. They could probably try to find another way up further along the old overpass, but there was no telling how many mines or broken gaps in crumbling asphalt there would be. While the boss had toned down some of her Grognak-style _swing in and bash the living fuck out of anything that moves_ style in favor of his preferred _pick ‘em off from a sane distance_ , there were still times when she couldn’t help but go flinging herself into the center of a hornet’s nest.

And God help him, but he was always there just one step behind.

He crept up onto the lift next to her, pounding his fist against the red button. The thing shuddered, then began to move slowly upwards. Its gears protested loud enough that MacCready winced. “They’re gonna hear us coming,” he pointed out.

The boss made a face. “Yes,” she said. She fumbled into the pouch at her waist, pulling out a pulse grenade. He watched the way she grasped the base and pulled the pin with one hand, elegant, painted nails blood red against the black-and-chrome. The lift jostled, but she held perfectly steady—and MacCready realized with a weird flare of panic that he didn’t for a second think she might accidentally let go of the grenade and blow the both of them to pieces, even in the unsteady bumping and lurching of the lift. He _trusted_ her too. With his life. Maybe with Duncan’s.

Holy shit.

“You okay, Mac?” the boss… _Ava_ …murmured, and he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, speaking past the lump in his throat. He lifted his rifle, preparing himself as they began to near the Gunner’s nest. “I’m good to go. Let’s fuc—freaking do this.”

“Let’s freaking do this,” Ava agreed with a crooked grin. And then she arched her brows in a way he knew to mean _okay, quiet time now_ and peered up at the nearing lip of the overpass. She pursed her red lips, waiting, waiting…then flung the grenade in a perfect arc, free arm lifting to shield her face as she ducked away from the oncoming blast.

Unable to help himself, feeling like an _idiot_ for doing it, MacCready lifted his own arm to shield her, wrapping around her in a protective gesture that had her head tucked up against his neck, his face pressed into her hair.

The grenade detonated, screams following the sonic _boom_. Somehow, none of it was quite as loud as the sound of her breath against his collarbone; the erratic beating of his heart.

Ava pulled back just enough to look up at him, their eyes locking for one long, uncertain moment. Frozen there in a startled tableau. Then she wet her lips and offered a weak sort of smile to break the utter stillness, gripping her gun and launching herself into the fray as if running from something.

From him?

Shit shit _shit_.

He was up and after her in a flash, guarding her six as he swept the chaos of the scene. There were scattered body parts around a smoking crater in the asphalt. Even better, there was a shattered assaultron unit powering down with weak little flickers—that would have been a _bitch_ to take on.

“MacCready!” Ava called, firing.

He spotted the Gunners pouring out of a guard station down at the far end of the nest, machine gun turret already lighting up. “Got it, boss!” he said, focusing down the scope. He heard a soft _whzzt_ and felt air displaced right next to his ear, but he ignored the rain of gunfire and sucked in a steady breath, focusing, focusing…

The turret exploded in a shower of sparks, fire licking up toward the ceiling of the overpass. He barely gave himself time to reorient before he was swinging his rifle around to find his next target, carefully aiming at a young Gunner’s head before pulling the trigger.

And again. And again.

It was a long, brutal fight. Even with the element of surprise, the odds were stacked against them—even worse, these were no disorganized Raiders. Winlock and Barnes may have been assholes, but they were highly trained assholes…and they had a suit of power armor, which was a bitch and a half MacCready was more than happy to send staggering back with a rain of bullets.

Finally, _finally_ , it was all over, and he staggered next to Ava, who was standing—and bleeding—over the body of Barnes. He was staring up at the sky with a shocked scream locked on his face, an _oh shit_ expression that struck MacCready as deeply, darkly funny. He nudged the man’s corpse with his toe, smirking down at him. Jesus. They’d actually managed to take down the whole nest.

Ava crouched, visibly favoring her left arm, and dug through Barnes’ pockets. She pulled out guns, examined them, then tossed a few aside into piles MacCready was already very familiar with: keep, sell, scrap for parts. Since it was Barnes, most of the weapons were falling into _scrap for parts_ ; the little fucker had never had much taste.

“Hey,” she said, looking up to catch his eye. Her hair was half tumbling out of its style, falling into a sweep of curls an old movie star would envy. The spatter of blood across her face could have been dabbed with a paintbrush. Hell, even her injured arm was crooked in a way that looked graceful, dark stain of her blood a Rorschach test he didn’t want to study too hard. Next to Ava, MacCready felt as if he’d gone rolling around in a pit of sweat and blood and all kinds of shit. He bet he looked like the ass end of a Brahmin. “Hey, _Mac_ ,” Ava added when he didn’t answer.

“Hey, _what_?” he demanded, though his voice didn’t sound half as snippy as he’d intended. If anything, he sounded…kinda _fond_.

She grinned, a dimple flashing at the corner of her mouth, and handed him the tiniest gun he had ever seen. It fit easily within the palm of his hand, hidden there if he so much as closed his fingers. It was a bright, polished silver, gleaming prissy and small. The handle was some kind of milky, shimmery stone. “What the heck?” he demanded.

Ava just laughed. “ _Say hello to my little friend,_ ” she said, voice dropping in that way she had, like she was quoting something he should be familiar with, but never was. MacCready shrugged, and Ava sighed, reaching up to grasp his arm to help herself to her feet. “Wasted,” she said.

“Uh-huh. You okay, Av—uh, boss?” he asked, watching as she swayed. That dark Rorschach was growing.

She shrugged her good shoulder. “I’ll need a stimpack and some manly nursing,” she said, as if it weren’t a big deal. Blood was drip-dripping steadily from her fingertips. “You know anyone who can fill in?”

“Maybe,” he said, already shouldering his rifle. “If the pay’s good.”

“I’m touched by your concern, truly,” Ava teased, eyes following as he tucked the tiny gun safely away. Then he was catching her good arm, carefully— _gently_ , as if she were made of spun glass and hadn’t all but blown the heads off a half-dozen trained killers in the last hour—leading her to a wobbly chair. Ava let herself be led, biddable in a way she really only was when injured; her eyes stayed on his face.

He fought a blush and focused on her arm. “Looks like a clean enough shot,” he said, carefully probing around the bullet hole. The blue vault suit was a deep purple from all that blood, ends of the circular hole curling up roughly. He was weirdly aware of how filthy his hands were and considered grabbing for some water or something to try to scrub them cleaner, but she just smiled when he quickly met her eyes.

Sitting there, head tipped back, letting him doctor her up. It was just as intimate as the moment he had wrapped around her, _shielded_ her from the grenade blast. Even if he couldn’t feel her breath against his neck, he was all too aware of her eyes on him. Of her smell, as complicated and intriguing as the woman herself. _Soft_ , just a little, if you knew what you were looking for…again, just like Ava.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, uh,” MacCready said. “Went clean through. Stimpack and you’ll be good to go—no need to dig anything out.”

Ava leaned forward a little, waiting until he met her eyes again. She had a million and one different smiles he’d noticed over their time together—wicked, bemused, sarcastic, dry. This was his favorite, all simple warmth without any of the complications. “Thank you,” she said. Then, head tipping, “…RJ?”

He groaned.

“I’ll find the right one,” she promised, settling back. “Eventually. We’re, uh—I was thinking we should make a real pit stop now that we’ve taken care of things with the Gunners. What do you think of heading to Sanctuary? If you still want to travel together, that is.”

MacCready stilled, one hand already reaching for the supply of stims. He studied her, floored, and more than a little pleased (though he’d have to be dragged through the sewers on his lily white ass before he admitted that.) He _knew_ about Sanctuary, of course. He even knew that there was some kind of…thing there. Some mystery about Ava’s life and why she was the way she was. Even more, it was the beating heart of the Minutemen and the place where _her clan_ lived, and he’d figured, well. He was just a hired gun. Why would she ever want to let him into something like that, trust or no trust?

Hearing the almost shy invitation, the way she stumbled over the words as if she was _hopeful_ he’d say yes… He’d already decided he was giving her back the caps she’d paid him. He’d been pretty damn sure he was going to keep traveling at her side.

Now…God, now, nothing could keep him from it.

“Sure,” he said, voice suspiciously gruff. He focused on uncapping the stimpack and lining it up. “A pit stop before we hit the road again sounds good to me.”

He didn’t want to have to say, _I’ve got your back until the day you tell me you don’t want me no more_. Thankfully, Ava didn’t make him. She just smiled—that gentle smile; his favorite smile—and looked down at her bloody hands. “All right RJ,” she said. “We’ll scav for anything worth keeping, then head northwest before sundown. Though, one thing I was wondering…” She trailed off, lips quirking at the corners.

And of course he played along, binding off the bullet wound as the stim did its work. “Yeah?” he said. “What’s that?”

Ava tipped her head to look at her, dark sweep of hair falling across her blood-flecked cheeks. “Have you ever wanted to try out some power armor?”


	9. Chapter 9

“Hell. Freaking. Yeah!” MacCready hooted, bounding across the grass with hydraulic ease. The Gunner’s power armor fit like a glove…once they’d pried the dead Gunner out of it first, of course.

God, he felt like he was a superhero—like he’d sprung right out of one of the comic books he used to collect as a kid. Each move felt strangely weighted and weightless all at once, as if he could bound over a building if he just gathered up enough steam…or punch a hole through one if that failed.

It was fucking fun, the most fun he’d had in a really long time, and even weighted down with all the junk Ava insisted on bringing with them, he’d never felt cooler. More powerful. More freaking _badass_.

“It suits you,” Ava called, laughing, from somewhere behind him.

He turned, grinning like an idiot, to watch as she crested the hill. All kinds of readings were popping up as he watched her, which was _also_ so flipping awesome he could barely stand it. He was aware of the fusion core humming along, powering him up. The world was washed in a freaky green haze.

MacCready posed for her, gun cocked. “What do you think?” he joked. “Am I like something outta an old war recruitment ad?” He’d always been skinny and scrappy—a lifetime of malnourishment would do that—but in this tin can, he felt like one of those stupidly muscle-bound guys he’d always secretly wanted to be. Like that fucking Paladin guy who was all scruff and bicep. He pointed at her and intoned, “Your country needs _you_ , soldier.”

She laughed again, trotting to catch up. One hand fell casually to his armored arm, and even though he couldn’t feel it…his body refused to believe that. He shivered.

“Yeah,” Ava said. “One look at you and I’d sign right up. Where’s the dotted line?”

“Too bad you already outrank me.”

“The General’s life is a hard one, soldier,” she teased. Then her gaze drifted away again, toward the horizon. Her expression went strangely strained, almost-yet-not-quite melancholy. “We’re getting close,” she added, hand falling away as she passed him by—moving toward the distant point of Sanctuary like she was drawn there like a needle threading cloth. But judging by the way she got tenser and tenser the more she studied the horizon, MacCready couldn’t help but wonder, well…

If she was so eager to return _home_ , then why the fuck did she seem so twisted up about it?

The thought had been bugging him ever since they’d taken off from that overpass and he’d begun to read the growing conflict in her eyes. It was part of why he kept fooling around like some kind of clown, trying to tease a smile out of her. Going home should make you feel good; it should make you happy. And she didn’t seem all that _unhappy_ , really, so much as…

As…

Fuck if he knew. And he hated that he couldn’t figure it out enough to _fix_ it.

So he bounded alongside her, hydraulics whirring, and tried to keep her nice and distracted from the _whatever_ that was pulling her spirits down. “But seriously,” MacCready said. “I hope you snagged one of those junk cameras, because that Danse guy would shi—uh, crap himself to see me in this thing, and I am _not_ missing that golden opportunity.”

There. There it was: that laugh again, low and throaty. MacCready grinned back, warming on the inside, glad at least he could manage this for her—fighting back the creeping feeling he’d be willing to do a hell of a lot more if she so much as crooked a finger.


	10. Chapter 10

True to form, Preston was waiting for her the moment she crossed the bridge into Sanctuary.

“General,” he said, casting MacCready a carefully assessing glance. He wasn’t the first tag-along she’d brought into Sanctuary. Heck, he wasn’t even the first one wearing power armor. But MacCready had a special sort of something about him that none of the others had—though whether that was good or bad, she supposed, depended on the eye of the beholder—and she couldn’t blame Preston for taking a second glance. A third, fourth, fifth.

“ _General_ ,” MacCready muttered beneath his breath, lightly mocking. 

Ava did her best to ignore him. “Preston,” she said. “It’s good to see you. How is everything holding up?”

He fell into step beside her, reaching for her bags and extra guns the way he always did when she came home after a long trek. He was just the kind of guy who did stuff like that—who gave a shit. Some days it felt like he was one of the last gentlemen in the Commonwealth. “Things are going well. We’ve finished repairs on three more buildings. Sector A has been completely turned into dormitories. Sector B remains storage and R&D. We’ve added a new floor to the rec hall, and I’ve claimed the house at the far end of Sector C as HQ. You have a desk waiting for you.” He raised a brow at her. “It’s the one lined with bobbleheads.”

“Thanks,” Ava said. “Could you show MacCready to where we keep the power armor? I’d like Sturges to take a look. It’s been modded by Gunners who don’t know their tits from their assholes, but we may be able to scrap some useful parts.”

Preston didn’t respond to the colorful description. MacCready, however, began to grin, crooked teeth flashing against the dirty scruff of his beard. He didn’t curse himself, but he always, _always_ took the greatest of pleasure in the curses of others.

Well. No, actually, mostly he seemed to like it when _she_ did it.

“MacCready, huh?” Preston said, taking the excuse to eyeball her latest companion again.

“Yeah, that’d be me.” MacCready tilted his chin so the brim of his hat shaded his eyes. He was looking Preston up and down too, a little wary—the two of them reminded Ava of a pair of old tom cats trying to decide whether it was worth taking a swipe at each other. She wondered if she was going to have to run interference. “You the robot butler she’s been telling me so much about?”

She bit the inside of her mouth to swallow back a laugh. “ _MacCready_ ,” Ava said.

He just waved her off. “Yeah, I got it: play nice with the other kids. Come on, then, Preston—let’s go _play nice_ and get me out of this tin bucket. I’m sweating like you wouldn’t believe in here.”

“Actually,” Preston said, swinging his full attention back to her. His shoulders held perfect military stiffness. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, General. I’ve heard news of a—”

Of a settlement in need of help. Of a likely-looking spot to set up some settlers and steal back a bit of the wasteland. Of a nest of raiders or a pack of ghouls or a storm of supermutants or something, anything, that needed _her_ attention right away. There was always, always _something_ , and she was always willing to listen with an open mind and a can-do spirit. And she would this time too.

Just…not yet.

Ava took a half-step back. “Later,” she said. Her voice must have come out rougher than she’d intended, because Preston’s brows arched and MacCready looked at her like he wanted to…she didn’t know. Reach out for her. Clasp her shoulder or give her an awkward side-hug or something else entirely too improbable. She wondered suddenly if she looked just as tired and worn down as she felt. As good as it was to be home, she could already feel the weight of it settling on her shoulders again; weighing her down more and more and more each time she returned.

She loved her home; she did. It was just that sometimes, it felt too damn much like a graveyard.

“General…”

“It’s been a few months since I visited uphill,” she said before he could finish his gentle reproach, and Preston’s expression immediately cleared. He understood.

MacCready, however, did not. “What’s uphill?” he demanded, glancing toward his left—unerringly finding the path to the Vault with those sniper’s eyes. She was the only one who went up there now; the rest of Sanctuary had standing orders to avoid the blue house in Sector 2 and to never, ever cross the little stream wending its way behind the old subdivision. As far as she could tell, even Marcy had obeyed that particular command, though Mama Murphy never failed to give her significant looks when they passed by the old house she used to share with Nate. “What’s up, boss?”

She was all at once too tired to demur. “Ask around, if you really want to know,” she said. It was only right. She’d shared bits and pieces of her life with him, but never the full scope—the full truth. It always seemed so fantastical, impossible to believe, when she wasn’t _here_. But she trusted MacCready; there was no reason for him not to know.

Ava looked away. Dogmeat was already trotting toward the small bridge, as if he could sense he was needed. “I’ll be back in a few hours, Preston.”

He gave an almost-formal nod. “I’ll hold down the fort until you return, General. Follow me,” he added to MacCready, voice clipped with the order. He started to walk.

MacCready didn’t follow, feet planted stubbornly between Ava and the path to Vaul 111. “Boss… Ava. What’s going on?” He hesitated, then added in a low undertone: “You okay?”

It was ridiculous how she warmed at that question. She felt a sudden urge to step in and reach up to brush her thumbs along the warm scruff of his jaw—the only place left bare by the heavy armor. She thought suddenly, blindingly, she might like to kiss him right here, right now, in front of the whole sprawling neighborhood.

But the ring she still wore felt heavy on her finger, and she could feel the eyes of her old neighbors on her, judging her; as if, in her head, they were seeing _Nate’s old lady_ dressed like some kind of road warrior making time with another man.

So she turned away instead, pushing past MacCready without another glance. _I’m sorry_ , she thought, saying, “Make sure you get the power armor checked in. Preston will fill you in on everything you need to know. Come on, Dogmeat,” Ava added, ignoring the eyes she could feel on her back as she passed the happily panting dog and set her feet back on that old, familiar path. It led up and up and up, winding toward the busted gates and the cracked-open vault. The sun was still high in the sky, beating against her shoulderblades as she passed old ghosts pleading to be let inside, as she heard Shaun’s cries and Nate’s low reassurances, as she retraced her steps the way she always did when she came home, climbing in pilgrimage to the neat little row of graves that marked where her fellow vaultdwellers now slept side by side in the earth rather than their frozen metal coffins.

She stopped in front of the one marked by a stone cairn. She was glad to see that Nate’s medal of honor—or at least what remained of it after two hundred years in the irradiated shell of their suburban dreams—had been left on the gravesite, undisturbed.

“Hey,” she said, dropping into an easy crouch by the makeshift headstone. Ava rested her hand over the crest of the mound, trying to keep her voice light. She no longer felt the urge to cry when she came here. Sometimes, it felt like she’d never had enough tears to give to her husband—as if the loss of Shaun had so eclipsed her complicated feelings about the man she married that she couldn’t give him the grief he deserved.

But then, she’d never been able to give him what he deserved, had she? She’d been a poor trophy of a wife before the war. Now, she doubted he would have looked twice at her, carefully applied makeup and elaborately familiar hairstyle or not.

God, no, she was being unfair to Nate again. The more distance she put between her and her old life, the more like a cage those _good old days_ seemed to be. She shouldn’t think like that. She’d been happy once, right? “I’m still looking for Shaun,” Ava said, because Shaun had always been a safe topic between them. “I have a few leads. It sounds like more time may have passed in cryo than I thought. I may have already missed a few years of his life. I—”

She swallowed.

“I can’t think about that, actually,” Ava said. Her heart was twisting in her chest, hard enough that it was getting hard to breathe. She rubbed at her chest, as if the pressure could somehow relieve that knot that formed every time she thought of Shaun living all those years, thinking… What? That he was alone in the world? That his mother and father hadn’t loved him enough to come for him?

God, did he stare up at the ceiling every night and think she didn’t _care_?

“I can’t… It’s… _Fuck_. Sorry,” Ava added, fingers curling reflexively into the hard-packed earth. “Sorry. I know you hate it when I curse. A lady doesn’t curse. But I bet a lady doesn’t make heads explode like overripe fruit and want to kiss mercenaries either, do they?”

She dropped her head forward, eyes squeezing shut. Her lashes were wet after all, tears burning hot in her eyes; maybe she did have a few tears left to give Nate, though maybe not for the reasons he deserved. It was just…her baby was missing and her husband was dead and she had no idea if it was all right to want to move on from her old life—or whether any of those new desires, creeping up slowly and shaping her like metal in a forge, just meant she was being reborn. A product of the war. A creature of the wastes.

A motherfucking angel of retribution.

In all of the confusion, there was one thing she knew for certain: “I’ll find him, Nate,” Ava promised, hand curled around a fistful of dirt, eyes burning. “I may have ended up being a shitty wife, but I swear, I swear, I’m going to find our son, and I’m going to make sure he understands we never stopped thinking of him. Not for a moment. Not once for over two hundred years. And I’m going to look into the eyes of the men who stole him, and I am going to make them _pay_.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Follow me,” Preston said before Ava had even cleared the first corner. “We’ll get that armor checked in and assign you a bed. This part of the settlement is—”

“Yeah, so,” MacCready interrupted. “I think I’ll skip the guided tour, thanks.” 

He took a step forward, but the humorless Minuteman slapped his rifle out before he got very far, the bright red of its laser reflecting against dull chrome plate. MacCready looked down with faintly arched brows.

“Like I said: we’ll get that armor checked in,” Preston said.

He had to give it to the guy: he barely even _blinked_. No wonder Ava trusted him to keep things running shipshape when she was trawling the commonwealth. Still, impressive or not, Preston wasn’t the boss of him; Ava was the boss of him, and Ava wasn’t _there_. “You want it that bad,” MacCready said, flipping the internal latch that set the whole thing off like a chain reaction, “ _you_ wear it.”

There was a hiss of air, a creak of metal. The back began to rise, the arm and leg joints gracefully unclasping, and MacCready balanced up onto his toes as he began to step outside its heavy shell. He’d been locked inside long enough that his clothes were hanging slick against his skin, baked close by sweat and musk. He let out a breath, trying to shake the wrinkles free even as he stomped sensation back into his feet.

It felt good to be standing on solid ground again.

“All yours,” MacCready added with a sarcastic tip of his hat, smirking when Preston just snorted. Given time, he’d probably grow to like the guy. MacCready was a mouthy little shit—and proud of it—but he respected guys like Preston. Stand-up folk who got shit done and saw to the bottom line and helped the needy and yadda yadda yadda. It also helped that they were the most likely to be willing to roll with any of the crap _he_ pulled, even if it took a dame like Ava to see the humor in him.

Ava. Shit. He hoped she was okay.

“…districts,” Preston was saying, determined to give an abbreviated version of that tour after all. “Everything’s clearly marked, so you shouldn’t have any trouble wandering about where you shouldn’t be. Stay out of the armory,” he pointed to a heavily fortified building guarded by what looked like a Mr. Handy in a tophat, “the storeroom,” he pointed to a heavily fortified clapboard structure buzzing with activity, “the offices,” he pointed to, again, a heavily fortified ranch-style home practically plastered in Minutemen flags, “and the, uh, house.” He pointed to another ranch-style home, this one looking sad and neglected and, surprisingly, empty. There wasn’t a single turret in sight. In fact, MacCready noticed with rising interest, there was _nothing_ out of the ordinary about that house. It looked exactly like all the countless others he’d passed in his trips across the commonwealth, bombed-out and left to decay.

He wouldn’t have looked twice if he were anywhere else. Here, in Sanctuary Hills, it stood out like rot in a perfectly healthy tree—dilapidated, empty, forgotten while all around it, life buzzed industriously on.

_One of these things is not like the others_ , MacCready whistled as he tipped his hat toward Preston and mosied on into town. He left the Minuteman to figure out the quirks of that particular set of power armor, idly moving down the street past rows of cheerfully humming turrets.

Sanctuary Hills was like very little he’d seen in all his years. There were neighborhoods that sprung up in the wake of annihilation, of course. Places like Diamond City, or Goodneighbor, or Little Lamplight. There were farms, too, where a couple of families huddled together and tried to make do with what life had given them.

Sanctuary Hills was stuck somewhere in the middle. It wasn’t yet like one of the towns, but it wasn’t just a homestead either. It was…

It was like seeing the _beginnings_ of something great, MacCready realized. It was as if he was seeing the birth of a new Bunker Hill: a place where people could go to be safe.

The thought made his insides want to crawl, both in pride and a weird sense of fear. Because yeah, hell yeah, he wanted to throw in with something like this, but also… Well. The architects of that kind of change had a way of getting themselves killed along the way, and just the thought, the image, of some crazy putting Ava in their crosshairs…

He blew out a breath, dragging his fingers through his hair, and took a sudden left toward the shelter of that one strange, forgotten house.

MacCready couldn’t even say why he was drawn to it. Sure, part of it was he didn’t like being told where to go and what to do. Part of it was curiosity over that one bit of rot he could see. And part of it was this weird, crawling need deep in his gut to _understand_ the boss better than he already did. If he was going to watch her back and keep her from getting a bullet between the brows, he needed to know her in and out, up and down. She could be so close-lipped about things, especially when he was pretty damn sure they bothered her. Even more, she rarely talked about her past, except in vague ways that raised more questions than they answered.

He didn’t know that he’d learn anything _here_ of all places, but there had to be some reason this one place—this one house out of the entire pre-war neighborhood—had been left to go fallow. And if he could pick his way through the rubble and figure out _anything at all_ , he’d take it and gladly.

Honestly, he’d take anything he could get, just to be that much closer.

“Aw, hel- heck,” MacCready muttered, resettling his hat with a scowl. He sounded like a fucking creeper when he put it like that.

Scowling to himself, he ducked past an old shrubbery and into the back yard. None of the residents of Sanctuary Hills had raised a fuss, but he kept his eyes peeled just in case. It was like any other op he’d been on with Ava, crouching low and moving silent, only this time he was ducking nosy Minutemen and not supermutant suiciders.

There was a panel missing from the back of the house, sheered clean off sometime in the last few decades. MacCready glanced around one last time before slipping easily inside. He kept his weight on the balls of his feet, wary for the telltale hiss of a pressure switch or hum of a turret. The rest of the neighborhood was so heavily armored that it seemed bizarre that this one house missed militarization…but after slipping into the room and looking around a moment, he began to realize that, actually, it really _had_ been left to run fallow.

What was doubly weird was that no one had come along to pick it clean of any crap. Ava was a fierce believer in finding a new use for every bit of detritus she stumbled across. Standing next to a crib, looking around at old paintings, a changing table, lamp, chair…he had a hard time imagining Ava being willing to just let this all _be_. It wasn’t like her.

The hairs along his arms began to stand up.

“Well… _shit_ ,” MacCready said, giving voice to a rare permitted curse. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something unsetting about this house, this room. There were building blocks scattered across the floor. An old baby book left face-down amongst the dust and creeping weeds. A sense of the whole world holding its breath, as if…

As if this was significant. As if this was an answer to a question he didn’t know how to ask yet.

He set his rifle and rucksack aside, rubbing his arms absently. When he took a step, he could almost hear the distant echo of a baby crying; the presence was _so real_ here that it chased every unsteady echo of his heart.

Thoroughly creeped out, yet still determined to sate his curiosity, MacCready moved slowly out of the room. There was another bedroom across the way, this one obviously for the parents. There were hints of their lives still scattered around here and there: the skeleton of a bed, a few rags hanging in the closet, a bedside table with burned books on top. Nothing that explained why it had been left like a museum while the rest of Sanctuary Hills had been brought back to life.

He moved down the hallway, checking a little closet and a bathroom. He pocketed some bobby pins he found in the medicine cabinet, then paused and put them back where he’d found them, sliding the mirrored door shut with a near-silent _snickt_. It didn’t _feel right_ to loot the place, despite the fact that he and Ava had been nicking just about anything that wasn’t nailed down for what felt like forever now.

And now he was having _feelings_ about the place. Maybe he should get out of here before things got too weird.

But first he had to finish what he’d started. If he didn’t, the curiosity would drive him nuts.

Hurrying his steps, MacCready moved down the hall and into the living space. Most of the houses like this were near-identical. It was weird, imagining a world that didn’t have to fight for the basic necessities, where people willingly lived like carbon copies of each other. The kitchen was _there_ and the tv was _there_. Couches bracketed it like a ring of eager children. Nothing set this place apart from the hundreds he’d seen in his life.

Glancing around one last time, MacCready gave a one-shouldered shrug. Okay. So. Now he’d seen it. He still didn’t have any idea why it was so special, but he could do some digging around the neighborhood—maybe ask some of the people drifting around the place what the story was. Or maybe Ava, when she came back from…wherever she had gone off to, and fuck, but it made that place between his shoulders itch knowing she was off all alone, without him to watch her back.

Anyway. He wasn’t going to learn anything here.

Huffing out an irritated breath, MacCready turned on his heel and moved past the bookshelf toward the hall…then slowed at the soft crack of breaking glass.

He glanced down. It was a picture frame, fallen from the wall and left to collect dust and debris. He’d seen his share of those, too. The boss has this weird habit of collecting them wherever they went, insisting the faded images could be cleaned up and used to brighten the little dwellings she slapped together for random settlers. If she was here, no doubt she’d be nudging him aside and crouching to see if there was anything worth salvaging.

Maybe it was that thought. Maybe it was the way the memory of her made the corners of his mouth lift in amusement. Maybe it was just a whim—whatever it was, MacCready crouched to pick up the old frame, dirty fingers dusting away old glass.

The wood was busted, falling apart in his hands. The backing had pretty much rotted away. But the picture inside seemed like it might still be good. He slipped it free, letting the glass patter across the ground in a quiet rain, and turned it over to catch the light. He already knew what to expect. Most of them were landscapes. Or, worse, kittens. God, he hated those. Creepy as fuck. If it was a pastel kitten, he was leaving it behind and Ava be damned.

When he got a good look at the old image, however, it wasn’t a kitten staring up at him. It wasn’t a lighthouse, or a farm, or something the boss laughingly called _sad clowns._

It was Ava.

“Holy shit,” MacCready whispered, too shocked to swallow back the curse. He stared, utterly gobsmacked, at the old pre-war beauty in his hands. She was laughing up at the camera, red lips curved in a wicked smile, black eyes dancing with mischief. Everything was…

It was…

_Shit._

It was like looking right at the boss, except, except, fuck, she was…

She was _naked_.

Brazenly, gorgeously _naked_. Tits out and tipped by tight coral-colored nipples. Back arched playfully. One leg had been pulled up, pale thigh hiding the dark curls he couldn’t help but imagine there, faded lace spilling around her in delicate folds. _Chantilly Lace_ , the title card said, and MacCready didn’t know what the fuck that even meant, but his brain was firing impressions, thoughts, memories like crazy, and _he knew that smile._

He knew it, because it was Ava’s wicked smile, curving her lips as she lifted her shotgun; he knew it because (Christ, how had he forgotten?) he’d seen this picture _before_ , years ago. Hands trembling, he turned the page over, and sure enough, there was the familiar, neatly boxed interview with the model. The questions were inane, asking about favorite past-times and whether she preferred the beach or the mountains, but there’d been so little to read back then that he’d flip through the spank mag and read all about those girls’ lives, body boneless with pleasure, come cooling on his belly.

_Fuck._

He flipped the picture back over, eyes drawn down to those full, tempting breasts before he jerked his gaze back up to her too-familiar face. The likeness to Ava was eerie. Uncanny, even. Surely impossible, and yet there it was, smiling up at him like she was down for whatever he was _up_ for, and fuck, he was hard. He was staring at a picture of a pre-war model who looked _crazily_ like his boss and friend, and he was hard enough it was starting to ache.

He needed to get a grip.

He needed to put the magazine page down and back away.

He…he really needed to figure out what the fuck was happening, because it was one hell of a coincidence to find this single framed page in the middle of the one house in Sanctuary that Ava had left untouched. A museum. Wasn’t that what he’d thought?

_Why?_ MacCready wondered, fingers trembling. The woman in the picture seemed to dance and sway with the motion, so tempting his mouth was literally watering. _What the fuck is going on?_

He closed his eyes, remembering stroking himself off to the girls in these mags. Girls like this— _Chantilly Lace_ —had been his favorite. He’d never been particularly choosy in real life, but in his fantasies, yeah, he’d had a _type_. No wonder Ava had blown the head off his inner scale the moment she stepped into his life. She looked _exactly_ like his favorite fantasies come to life, literally. Literally literally literally, fuck.

“Fuck. Fuuuuuck. Fuck,” he breathed, and reached down to cup himself, squeezing the straining outline of his cock hard before forcing himself to let go and straighten.

He knew he should leave the picture behind. If he was a decent sort, he would. But he wasn’t particularly decent all the time, and he wanted answers. Because these sorts of things didn’t just happen; these coincidences weren’t real. And Ava…the boss…

_Nipples tight and red lips parted, hair curled in that way she always had, a wicked gleam in familiar black eyes._

…had a lot of explaining to do. Assuming he’d actually have the balls to ask her. Assuming they wouldn’t turn blue and fall right off at the sight of her.

“Well, shit,” MacCready murmured to himself, slipping the carefully folded paper into the pocket over his heart (no symbolism there; it was just easier to guard that way) and heading out of the weird old house as fast as his lack of blood flow would let him. “This is all kinds of messed up. All kinds.” Though he supposed it was also proof that perfect Minuteman Preston had never disobeyed orders and headed into this place. If he had, there was no way he wouldn’t be squirreled away on his cot right now, ridiculous hat over his face, hand working inside his pants, the boss’s naked doppelganger laughing from its frame on his bedside table like some kind of siren.

Ugh. Something was wrong with him that even that image was tempting enough to make him ache. _Hell_.

He snagged his rifle and rucksack and slipped out the same way he’d come. He moved around behind buildings before finding a nice open space to settle down in, visible to anyone who needed to keep a beady eye on him, but far enough away from the rest of the settlers that he could lean back on his palms and take deep breaths and try to calm the fuck down before he sprained something important. His cock was _upsettingly_ hard still, straining against the front zip of his pants in a way that had him squirming and cursing and fighting to keep his brain from connecting the dots between his early days to _that picture_ to the boss…Ava…dolled up and smiling wickedly and crawling across the grass toward him.

Or, God, worse: face clean of makeup, hair soft and pretty around her, twining her arms around his neck as she leaned in for the softest of kisses; breath against his cheeks, something crazily like love in his heart.

Closing his eyes, breathing deep, MacCready tried to focus past the burn of those images in his mind, his heart, his blood—denying the evidence that kept adding up all wrong and wishing like anything he’d never stepped foot in fucking Sanctuary after all.


	12. Chapter 12

Coming back from Vault 111 was a little like stepping back—or was it forward?—in time. Maybe that was why she felt so out of step, so…lost. Ava made her way down the hill and across the little stream, deliberately pushing aside swirling memories, grief, loss, fury. Sanctuary rose in the distance. Nate’s grave dwindled behind her.

Strange how whenever she came home, she felt trapped in amber between the two. Or would _frozen_ be more apt?

Ava sighed and rubbed at her eyes, trying to force herself back from the angry melancholy. On impulse, she veered left instead of right, going around behind the ring of ruined houses. The sun was warm against her shoulders and a light breeze was blowing. There’d be a rad storm later tonight; she had to remember to make sure Dogmeat was safely inside before the sky went green and threatening. She had to check in with Preston, to touch base with Nick, to see if Codsworth had everything he needed to keep this small civilization running. She had to update the men at the Castle so they knew her current location, and…fuck…she had to sit MacCready down and spill the truth of her past before he heard it from someone he shouldn’t.

It was important she be the one to tell him. More than that, it was time. And yet she couldn’t think of anything she wanted _less_. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought him here after all. There was no escaping the truth in Sanctuary.

_It’s not too late to make a run for it_ , Ava thought, lips twisting into an unhappy smile.

She nearly stumbled when she spotted MacCready sitting off by himself in the middle of a bit of cleared land. He had his rifle and rucksack piled next to him, expression openly baffled—as if the whole world was shifting like quicksand beneath his feet.

God, but she understood the feeling.

Ava immediately switched directions, moving toward him rather than where she knew Preston was patiently waiting for her. It was a tough transition, mentally going from Wanderer to General, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to make it yet. Out in the field, with MacCready watching her back, she felt…untethered. Unburdened. Free in a way she wasn’t sure she was ready to explore just yet.

It’d be nice to have a few more minutes of that before responsibility settled in a yoke across her shoulders again. It’d be nice to have time just to _be_ with MacCready. Maybe she could steal a few minutes, and _then_ she would tell him.

“Hey, Mac,” she said, settling on one of the many nicknames she kept trying on him and discarding. None of them ever seemed to fit. “Can I—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish before MacCready was scrambling up to his feet, eyes wide and a little wild. He jerked to look at her as if she’d said something just shy of crazy; Ava immediately lifted her hands, palms-out. “Whoa, whoa,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t,” he said, but that _look_ was still clear in his eyes. She watched as he pushed back his cap and dragged his fingers through his hair. His hand was actually _trembling_. “It’s nothing. Nothing.”

“Uh-huh,” she said slowly. Ava reached out, testing, and got all the answer she needed when he jerked back.

Well… _fuck_. She should have known better than to leave him alone in Sanctuary. Of course, _of course_ someone else saw fit to share her story the second her back was turned.

“MacCready,” she sighed, folding down into an unsteady crouch. Her legs suddenly didn’t feel strong enough to hold her. “Look. I can explain.”

If anything, that just made him seem _more_ uncomfortable. “There ain’t nothing to explain,” he protested, shifting back and forth, back and forth, like he wanted to book it for the nearest house but wasn’t quite sure he had the leave to do so. _That_ , too, made her heart sink unhappily. MacCready had always had one hell of a mouth of him. He bitched at her over supplies, over the weather, over the pace she kept, over every bit or bob she took it into her head to pick up. And she _liked_ that. She liked the way it made her feel as she sensed him slipping from _boss_ into something a lot friendlier, a lot closer, a lot…warmer.

They were friends. Forget everything else going on between them, spoken or unspoken. It didn’t feel right having him look at her now like he was waiting to salute before running away.

“There is,” Ava said quietly, sinking down fully against the grass. She patted the bit of green next to her. “Come on, sit. I’ll explain. I should have told you a long time ago.”

He stared at her for a long, long minute before slowly sinking down again. The way his knobby knees poked out past his coat shouldn’t have been so endearing. A lot of things about MacCready shouldn’t have been so endearing, and yet whenever she added up the disparate parts of him, she couldn’t help but come away feeling…charmed. So very, very charmed.

She rubbed at her face with the heels of her palms, not caring for once if she smudged her eyeliner. “Who told you? Was it Preston? No,” Ava added before MacCready could answer. She dropped her hands again, leaning back against them. She supposed it was only a matter of time before he knew the truth about where she’d come from. She’d meant to tell him herself—she’d almost done it, a dozen or so times as they criss-crossed the Commonwealth. Eventually, she told all of the companions she traveled with. It just made sense to share this part of herself.

It wasn’t like they never noticed something was a little…off…about her.

And yet no matter how many times Ava told herself that _today_ would be the day she’d unravel the whole sad tale for him, she kept finding excuses not to tell MacCready the truth. It didn’t matter that she’d planned on finally doing it today— _someone_ had taken that choice away from her. If she waited long enough, she supposed someone always did.

“So. The important bits. I lived here, before the war,” Ava said, uncertain where else to start. It didn’t matter how many times she tried to do this—it always felt awkward and uncomfortable. Like she was trying to slip back into someone else’s skin. “In that house, actually.” 

She leaned forward, pointing; MacCready actually _paled_. Damn it, this was going badly already. Best to just power through. Even if someone had already blabbed the gist, she owed him the story from her own lips. “I lived there with my husband and…and Shaun. Just the three of us, with Codsworth to watch over us. One day—just a _normal_ day—the sirens sounded. We grabbed Shaun and ran for the vault up the hill. Vault 111.”

His eyes dropped to the blue suit she was still wearing, all this time later. Ava’s lips twisted into a shadow of a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “But it wasn’t like a normal vault. They rushed us through processing as the bombs fell above us—I still felt the reverberations, saw black dots dancing in the corners of my eyes from that first burst of light—and urged us inside these decontamination chambers. Only…they weren’t. They were cryo pods. I was already freezing in place before I realized what was happening.”

“ _Fuck me_ ,” he murmured, so quietly she almost missed it. Usually, MacCready tried to curb his own foul language—a promise to his kid or something else impossibly charming—but… But yeah. Yeah, Ava figured: _fuck me_ pretty much summed it up.

“I woke once before I was supposed to, when a team came down to… Well. We’re still trying to piece together _what_ they were doing, but they opened my husband’s pod and tried to take Shaun from him. When he resisted, they shot him. I could see it through the window of my pod, and I remember, just—”

_God_ , this part was hard. Ava looked down, swallowing…then let out a gusting breath when a big hand folded hesitantly over hers. _Gently_ , calloused fingertips rubbing soothingly across her skin. She didn’t dare look up to meet his eyes, knowing she’d see welling empathy there.

Not sympathy. Not what Piper or Preston or Nick had to offer. No, not with MacCready. He’d get it, she knew. He, out of anyone, would _understand_ the gut-deep horror of watching a spouse die. Of seeing your child in danger.

He knew, he understood, he wasn’t judging.

And maybe that was part of why she’d waited so long to tell him. She sensed the echo of her pain in him and wasn’t sure she knew how to handle the way it’d feel to look up and see so much mirrored back at her.

She was such an idiot.

Slowly, she turned her hand over, threading their fingers together. MacCready squeezed and she squeezed back, drawing strength from the chapped warmth of his palm. It never got any easier to tell her story, but it did wonders—it changed everything—to know that, in this moment, she was not alone in the telling. She should have done this long ago.

“We think it was the Institute. The man leading the team was a mercenary named Conrad Kellogg. Nick has been hunting for information on Kellogg for me all this time, hoping it’ll lead us to Shaun. They took him, and he looked into my pod as the cryo chamber began to freeze me in place again, and he said…”

MacCready tightened his grip and Ava looked up, meeting familiar eyes. Her heart stuttered painfully.

“He said at least we have the backup. We still don’t know what he meant—what they needed Shaun for. I went under again, and by the time I woke for the last time, it was years later. I shoved my way out of the pod and found Nate, just. His blood was frozen in splatters against the window. He was…” She licked her lips. “I checked all the pods, but none of them made it. I was the sole survivor. The entire vault was a graveyard. I clawed my way out to find that over two hundred years had passed while I was sleeping. I returned here, I found Codsworth, I began searching for Shaun, I met Preston and the Minutemen, and… And I think you know the rest.”

MacCready didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. He just sat there, gripping her hand as if it were a lifeline—or maybe he was _her_ lifeline. It was impossible to tell now, the dark fear and anger and grief stirred up inside her like silt clinging to the bottom of a lake. Each ripple on the surface, each disruption, sent the whole mass swirling black and inescapable.

“We’re searching for my son,” Ava murmured, eyes on their interlaced fingers. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been touched by anyone like this. It felt…good. “And we’ll find him. In the meantime, I’m doing whatever I can to make the world _better_ for him. Though I guess… I guess you could say I’m just distracting myself while I wait for a lead. I don’t know. I don’t know that it matters. I just. I just want to find him. I just.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” MacCready said again, suddenly letting go of her hand. Ava looked up, fighting to blink away the hot tears gathering on her lashes. His expression blurred, went indistinct, but she swore she saw something familiar in the clench of his jaw before—

_Oh_

—he pressed close, one skinny arm going around her shoulders. MacCready tugged and Ava went willingly, _gladly_ , collapsing against his chest with a soft breath. She fit perfectly against the curve of his body, face tucking against his shoulder, one arm sneaking around his trim waist. _Melting_ into his warmth and the protective comfort of a most unexpected embrace.

Forget the last time she had been touched; she couldn’t even begin to remember the last time she had been _held_. It had to have been Nate, back before the birth of Shaun had left them sleep-deprived and circling like proud satellites about the new life they’d brought into a doomed world. If she closed her eyes, perhaps she could remember what he had felt like. Big. Muscular. Strong. Smelling like his favorite soap and…

_Gun oil. Pine, from the needles he lined his pockets with, to counteract the stink of sweat and dirt. Muttfruit and sun-warmed leather and metal casings._

Ava filled her lungs with the comforting scents, squeezing her eyes shut tighter and tigher. She could hear MacCready’s heartbeat, steady—if a little fast—and feel each rise and fall of his breath. God, she could sink into his warmth for hours. She could lose herself here, comforted, safe. Endlessly grateful.

There was a light pressure against the crown of her head, there and gone again in an instant. A kiss. His breath stirred black hair as he murmured, “We’ll find him. Boss. Ava. We’ll find him. I’ll help. Yeah?”

_Yeah_. Simple as that. Ava tightened her grip and felt MacCready tighten his own in response. And wasn’t that as much a symbol of what they were to each other as anything? An ouroboros, like the tattoo Nate had once forbidden her from getting. A circuit closed and cycle met. Fuck, she needed to think about something else before she started to cry in earnest.

“I’m glad you’re here, MacCready,” Ava murmured against his shoulder, taking the comfort he offered while she still could. “I…thank you.”

“Bobby,” he said. Ava twisted, pulling back just enough to look up at him in question. He shrugged a shoulder. “I dunno,” he added. “You keep trying to find a nickname, so, there you go. Bobby’s what they used to call me before I fell in with Little Lamplight. I guess it fits as well as anything.”

“Bobby,” Ava said, and slowly began to smile through the tears.

He made a face. “Don’t make anything weird outta it,” he warned—yet at the same time he gently tugged her back against the warmth of his body, chin tucking against the crown of her head, one arm crossed protectively over her back, the other splayed against the ground for balance. Near his rifle, as if he could protect them both from whatever threat came next. Vigilant, the way she knew he had been from the moment Lucy had been taken.

_Safe_. Funny how skinny arms and a wiry chest could make her feel so incredibly _safe_ and yet so incredibly sad, all at once. Ava curled against him, unresisting, letting her eyes close and her breath go even as she relaxed into the bittersweet swirl of emotion. It would end soon, she knew. He’d go back to _boss_ and she’d go back to _MacCready_ and things would progress as they always had before.

But here, now, for this moment, they were somehow something more than that. And she wished with everything she had that she was brave enough to lift her face to his in invitation…that she could cup his jaw and brush their mouths together and bring this final circuit to a close.

An ouroboros, right? Two grieving parents, two all too similar souls, two… _something_. They were two _something_ , and she wanted, she _wanted_ …

Ava let out a breath. MacCready tightened his grip. Down the slope, the ghosts of Sanctuary lived on, and somewhere in the wasteland her son was waiting for them to bring him home. They just had to find him first.

“Hey, Bobby?” Ava said, voice low.

He let out a stuttery breath. “Yeah?”

“Thanks. For not freaking out when you found out the truth.” For staying by her side. For caring. For…all of it, everything. For so fucking much.

MacCready’s grip tightened again, and she felt that press against the crown of her hair: lips, there and gone in the softest of kisses. “Sure, boss,” MacCready said, emotion making his voice rough. “No problem.”


	13. Chapter 13

Well, he was well and truly fucked now, wasn’t he?

MacCready sat on the sloping grass, one arm wrapped around Ava’s shoulders, face pressed against her hair. It tickled his nose, each breeze dragging long, loose strands across his cheek. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine it was the brush of her fingertips and—

 _No_.

 _Stop_.

_Reel it on in._

This was getting out of hand. This was— This was _not a good idea._ And he knew that, he recognized that, because his life had been nothing but one bad idea after another. His life had been a fucking _parade_ of stupid decisions and ill-advised stunts, and he was not ruining the best thing he had going for him by making it _weird_ or nothing.

(Because God forbid this thing between them get any weirder.)

MacCready let out an unsteady breath, but Ava just hummed in low agreement, sinking deeper into his side. Her cheek was resting against his shoulder, face tucked up warm and trusting in the curve of his neck. One of her hands splayed wide across his chest—over his heart, as if she were counting out its racing ticks—close. Real, real close to where that picture was folded and tucked away, safe out of sight but nowhere near out of mind.

That picture of…her? It didn’t seem possible, even after everything she had told him. And yet the boss was just one impossibility after the other, so who was he to say when she’d reached the limit of what miracles she could accomplish?

Even so, it set his mind to whirling, thinking of her back in the old days. Living in some perfect suburban paradise with a husband and a kid and a— _fuck_ , the woman he knew was full of too much blackpowder fire to be happy with that kind of settled for long. How had she kept from being bored out of her skull in that kind of strained, idealized life?

 _By sneaking off and taking dirty pictures, turns out_.

MacCready shifted at the thought, and she shifted with him, nose just barely grazing his jaw when she moved. He froze as if hearing the warning beep of a pressure mine, eyes gone wide and staring into the distance, body… Just… _Responding_ to the mixed-up feel of her against him blended with _that image_ : tits out, eyes wicked, smile a come hither he could read in any language. She must have been laughing the whole time she dolled herself up and splayed out for the camera. It was there in her eyes, in the wide, red curve of her mouth, in the loose-limbed way she seemed to sprawl as if to say, _yeah. Yeah, come on and try your best shot._

God, he wished he could have seen her then. He wished he could see her like that _now._ What he wouldn’t trade to get his hands on all that soft, unscarred skin, to map out the curves even hunger hadn’t melted off of her, to show her in the only way he knew how just how fucking much she’d come to mean to him. He’d like to let his gun-hardened palms rasp up her spreading thighs; he’d like to meet those wing-tipped eyes as he leaned in and blew a hot breath along the glistening wet curls of her—

Aw, shoot. Hell. Crap. Damn. Shit. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“MacCready?” Ava murmured. Low and _sweet_ , and he was fucked in the head if he was sitting here thinking the boss—the woman who seemed set to burn the whole Commonwealth around her—was anything close to _sweet_. “Something wrong?”

 _No. Yes. Fuck._ “Just got to, uh, you know.”

“No,” she said with a laugh; it puffed hot against his skin, making his flesh prickle in response. He was getting hard. He was— This was _not good_. “I haven’t taken to reading minds lately.”

“Har har,” MacCready said, desperately grateful for that small mercy. Between wanting to cup her face and kiss her like some kind of prince from a fairy story to wanting to cup her thighs and _kiss her_ like some kind of…whatever…he was glad enough she couldn’t crack open his skull and take a peek at what was inside. How, _how_ had this woman scrambled him up so completely? And how had he not seen it coming until suddenly, one-two punch and he was down for the count?

Had this all been building up inside him all along? Or did she have a pair of, like, mesmeric tits or something?

Fuck, he really was losing his cool fast.

Ava pulled back to look at him, as if sensing him quietly unraveling beside her. There was a crease in her cheek from where she’d been pressed against his jacket. It was some kind of lunacy that had him wanting to smooth that mark away with his thumb…to tip her chin and learn in to catch her lower lip between his teeth. “It’s okay if you’re a little weirded out by me. It’s a lot to take in,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “I know it sounds like something out a Jules Verne novel, but…I swear I’m not making it up.”

“No, it’s, yeah, fine,” he said—paralyzed a little. “I’m not—I believe you, boss.”

“Yeah?” There was surprising vulnerability in that one word.

MacCready let out another long, gusting breath, then reached up—careful, as if she were a deathclaw—and dragged his knuckles along her jaw. The way she smiled and tilted her face toward the caress absolutely did not make his heart give a pathetic lurch. “Yup. No weirder than a pre-teen for mayor turned infamous merc for hire.”

“ _Infamous_ may be stretching your own street cred a little thin there, Bobby,” she teased, and he almost, _almost_ really did kiss her then, just to taste that name on her lips.

MacCready scrambled up, tugging his coat tight around him. Blustering. “ _Infamous_ ,” he shot back. “And good enough you’ve kept me around this long, huh? Besides,” he added, grabbing his rucksack and slinging it over his shoulder. “This news about the vault and the past and all that—it sure explains a lot about you.”

Ava leaned back on one hand, shadowing her eyes with the other. The smile that crept across her face was one part sweet and one part salty, and God knew it made his whole heart swell until he was smirking back in something very close to a dorky grin. “Oh yeah?” she drawled. The supine arch of her, even kitted out in full gear, was a sight to behold. “And what exactly does it explain?”

“Well,” he sassed, hoisting his rifle. “The robot butler, for one. I’m gonna go—” Where, exactly?

She arched a single brow.

“See a man about a brahmin?”

Both brows came up.

“Drain the gecko? Loosen the valves?” Her eyebrows were slowly but surely climbing up toward her coiffed dark hair. “What’s the fancypants old world way of saying you’re going to go off to piss, then?”

Ava blinked, then burst into laughter—big, snorting laughs, her best kind, like she was so amused it was just ripping out of her. MacCready grinned, relaxing his posture a little. The whole world couldn’t be completely turned topsy-turvy if he could still make her laugh like that. (And yeah, okay, maybe this whole thing had been a long time coming, because he couldn’t remember a time when making her laugh hadn’t made him feel good; _fucking hell_.)

“We,” she began, then lost herself in another snorting giggle, one hand covering her face. “We _fancypants_ old worlders used to say we were _beating the piss out of the little guy_.”

“Beating the piss out of the little guy,” MacCready echoed slowly, smirking. “I like it.”

“You would.”

“Is that what your, whatever, your husband used to say?” He could almost kick himself for asking that. He would have, too, if his foot wasn’t already jammed so far down his throat. What the hell was he thinking? The mood shifted almost immediately, Ava’s dancing eyes dimming, smile fading away. She looked down, and MacCready wanted nothing more than to apologize right then, right there. “Look,” he began.

Ava shook her head. “No,” she said, reaching up. He grabbed her hand immediately, hoisting her to her feet; he was pathetically grateful that she didn’t just shove him away, muttfruit-for-brains that he was. “Nate was too polite for anything like that. He was a classy guy.” Her mouth did this strange, wobbly thing that made his stomach bottom out. “Probably too classy for me.”

“Impossible,” MacCready said, and the way she looked at him then made everything else just sputter and die in his throat. He couldn’t think of something else to say—he couldn’t think, full stop. Not when her expression was so soft and open. Not when she was standing so close. Not when the wind blew again, dragging a loose coil of back hair across her cheek and unfurling through the air like a ragged banner and God, God, he wanted— He—

Just.

He just… _wanted_. Full stop.

It had been a long time since he felt like this. It had been just as long since someone had looked at him the way Ava was now, _soft_ and full of warmth and affection and…something more? Maybe. Maybe not. He was too addled to parse it all out, stomach twisting and feet itching with a need to make a run for it even as the rest of him whispered that he’d make his last stand by this woman’s side.

Because of her, he was free of Winlock and Barnes. Because of her, there was hope for his son. Because of her, he was in terrible danger of feeling that gutting sense of loss that had nearly dragged him all the way down the day Lucy died.

MacCready quickly backed off, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve gotta go strangle that little guy.”

Ava glanced down, then back up, lips quirking. The weirdly tense moment was broken. “Yeah, that works too. C’mon,” she added, tipping her head. “I take it since you’re still lugging around your sack that Preston didn’t show you your new place yet. We’ve got indoor bathrooms and everything. With composting toilets, but still.”

“I don’t need a _bath_ ,” he scoffed, then did his best to smirk naturally when Ava elbowed his side and said, as if nothing at all had changed between them in the last hour of confessions and revelations, “Uh, I hate to break it to you, Bobby, but you really _do_.”

She walked him down an old sidewalk, past humming turrets and into a yellow house. It had whole strips of siding missing, but the gaps had been plugged with planks of wood and old street signs. A bare bulb hung in the main room over an empty pool table ringed by chairs. A jukebox winked brightly in one corner, _Sixty Minute Man_ jangling merrily all the way from the past.

Her past.

Hey, _hell_ , was she around the first time this old shitbox came on?

That thought—and reminder of just how old she was, how different her frame of references happened to be—had him reeling even as he followed Ava down a hall past closed doors. “Only Sturges bunks in here so far,” she said, pointing to one of the doors they passed. It had an old Nuka-Cola sign tacked up on it, grinning girl riding a glass bottle to the moon. “You’ll like him. This’ll be your room.”

Ava paused, one hand falling to the knob. “No one steals from each other in Sanctuary. No one snoops in each other’s space.”

He refused to flush at that.

“And no one’s going to come in and take it when you and I are on the road. This is your room, now, and it’ll be yours until you’re done with it.”

“Where’s your room?” MacCready asked, then immediately regretted it. He really, _really_ didn’t need to think about it—about Ava relaxed enough to let her hair down, to strip herself bare, to curl up in her bed all soft and warm and impossibly welcoming. (But of course he was. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it, not since she’d indirectly confirmed that picture was of her. If he was being honest with himself, not for long, long before then.)

If Ava could read any of that on his face, she didn’t show it. “I’m bunked two houses down, that way,” she said, gesturing. “In the new two-story we built. It was weird, staying in my old neighbors’ houses,” she explained. “Actually, I’m going to see about getting clean before Preston tracks me down for one of his reports. I’ll see you at dinner?”

He was imagining any reluctance to leave him; he knew he was. Still, it made something giddy and warm coil low in his belly, as insidious as the image of Ava going off to _get clean_. “Yeah, sure,” MacCready said. They were standing close together again—when had that happened?—and he was… Getting warmer, just being by her. Fighting a losing battle not to look at those parted red lips. Did she take actual baths, like they did in the old days? Did she stand naked in a tin tub and pour water over her body? He’d seen the huge water treatment gizmo in the river on their way in; he knew they could afford the luxury.

What did clean water taste like running off the slope of a woman’s breast?

And shit, what had he been saying right before his mind took a suicide run toward the wall? “Uh, when’d you ever know me to miss grub?”

It must have come out sounding natural enough, because Ava smiled and backed away. “Right, right,” she said. “The day you turn down food is the day I lower you into the ground; got it. See you in a few, Bobby.”

He wet his lips. “See you,” he said, but she was already halfway out the living room, skirting that big pool table ( _spreading her out across the green, watching her black hair coil across its soft nubs as he moved over her, into her, spreading her thighs about his skinny hips_ ) and heading out the door with a bounce in her step.

MacCready let out a long, slow, whistling breath. “Crrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap,” he said, pushing back his hat to rub at his forehead before pulling it back down again. He was screwed. He was so screwed.

Why the hell did he have to find that fucking picture? Now everything was…different.

(Now he was unable to pretend it hadn’t been different all along.)

He muttered to himself as he turned and pushed open the door— _his_ door, and how long had it been since he’d had a whole anything to call his own?—stepping inside before sliding it shut behind him. He dropped his rucksack in a waiting chair and slung his rifle on a hook beside the door, already reaching for his boots even as he took in his new space.

It was small, but big enough to feel palatial to someone like him. A clean cot took up most of one wall, its brass head and foot buffed to shining. There was a quilt laid out on its foot and a pillow at its head. A dresser took up the other wall, all its pieces mostly intact, with a ceramic bowl and a bottle of clean water just waiting for him. The chair was tucked into what used to be a closet, there were paintings on the wall, and overhead was another bare bulb.

MacCready set his boots and socks aside just under the chair and slung off his coat and scarf and hat, setting them on the dresser before reaching out to test the light. The room went bright, then dimmed again when he thumbed it off.

Bright. Dim.

He gave a little huff of laughter, leaving the light alone for now. The window had somehow made it through the end of the world with only a few cracks reinforced by colorful glue—a trick Ava’d shown him at more than one settlement, mixing in powdered rocks and other shit into the adhesive to make the ugly work of fixing up something broken somehow _pretty_ again—and honest-to-God curtains waited to be drawn against any nosy nellies wanting a show.

He padded over and tugged the curtains closed before reaching into that pocket just above his heart. The old paper made a crinkly noise as he pulled it free, and MacCready took great care in opening it, smoothing it out. Ava smirked up at him from the glossy page, hair done in those familiar dark rolls, a dimple flashing on one cheek, nails painted as red as her lips.

 _Chantilly Lace_ , whatever the fuck that magical shit was, scrolled out beneath her.

“Holy,” MacCready breathed, dragging one calloused fingertip across the perfect image of her. “Holy, holy crap.”

She had full, _gorgeous_ breasts. Just big enough that they’d overflow his hands, just heavy enough that they’d get that perfect sway when she moved. They were tipped by coral-pink nipples, so tight his mouth actually watered to see them.

She didn’t have all of the muscle definition she’d gained out here, and there was a bit more flesh to her in this picture—making her hips look heavenly soft, giving a bit of a curve to her belly—and MacCready suddenly, viscerally wished he could have known her then and now. That he could have lived in that old world with her, getting a decent schooling outside of how to blow some Raider’s head at a hundred paces, and learning all the pretty manners she’d probably been used to. Not getting so scarred and skinny from malnourishment. Buying those pretty teeth like Ava’s. But also? Also not being like the ghost of Nate, who was so proper he didn’t even have it in him to joke about—

What was it?

 _Beating the piss out of the little guy_.

He wasn’t sure she deserved someone like him—fuck, here he was getting hard over old naked pictures of her; the boss _definitely_ didn’t deserve a little shit like him—but she deserved better than whatever war hero she’d buried up that hill. MacCready didn’t know a lot, but he knew that much.

He also knew it was wrong, wrong, wrong to strip down and stroke himself while looking at old skin mag photos of Ava. She didn’t know he knew about this—she didn’t know he had it. Only a complete louse would get himself off thinking thoughts he didn’t have the courage to voice.

…and yeah, all that pretty moralizing wasn’t going to stop him, anyway.

“Okay,” MacCready said with a shaky breath. “Okay.”

He set the picture reverently on his pillow, turned to face him so he could just soak it in with only a little pop-sizzle of guilt. He thought about climbing into the bed himself to do this, but… MacCready couldn’t figure it out, but that felt too intimate. Too emotional. And God forbid, if he was going to take advantage of the woman he… _admired greatly_ …he would at least do her the respect of not getting all _emotional_ about it.

 _You’re such a fucking idiot_ , MacCready thought even as he palmed himself through his pants. _A deluded, perverted, hopeless idiot._

“Shut up,” he said, as if this were a conversation, and scraped his short nails across the rasp of fabric. He bit his bottom lip as he pushed his thumb just above the zip, nudging it down slowly, slowly, slowly even as he drank in the sight of her. Sprawled out and gorgeous. Laughing. Wicked. Wanting him back?

“Yeah,” he said, breath coming faster. He didn’t get to do this much on the road, and fuck, he was already dialed up to eleven just from the tease. He shifted from foot to foot, thumbing the button free and spreading the V of his waistband wide. He didn’t wear underwear—no point adding things he had to try to keep relatively clean—cock already so hard it sprang free on its own. The head was flushed deep and slick already, pearling beads of precome gathering as MacCready wrapped his fist around the base and gave a long, slow stroke.

“Fff-uuuuu-uuuuuuck,” he hissed, then swallowed back another curse. One. He’d give himself one, because, yeah, _fuck_ , this felt good. This felt—

_Her hands on him, capable and surprisingly strong. The tip of one blood red nail flicking across his cockhead, teasing at the slit._

“ _Fuck!_ ” MacCready said, hips stuttering forward. He bit the inside of his cheek and squeezed the thick length of his cock, fisting it once, twice, just shy of too hard. Images were swimming up before him, making his brain hum and his blood boil. He’d never let himself think of Ava all those (relatively few) times he’d managed to curl up in some corner and take care of business. He’d wanted to—he was willing to admit that now to himself, just how crazy she’d been driving him for weeks, months—but he’d kept it all locked away inside him, not trusting himself to fall over this particular ledge.

But now, Christ, now there was no going back. He couldn’t _not_ picture her crooked smile or wicked laugh. He couldn’t help but stroke himself hard-and-fast and stare at that damned picture of her, imagining what it would be like to _be_ there. To be able to step inside the picture too and reach for her.

She’d lay back, teasing him with the arch of her spine. Her breasts would be perfect twin mounds, her soft stomach going concave with the change in position—one thigh still slid up to protect herself from his hungry gaze.

“Well, Bobby?” she’d tease, sliding her hands up her own body. Those red nails would look just as good flicking her tight nipples as they would scratching down his back. “You like what you see?”

“You know I do, boss,” MacCready’d say, reaching out—never able in the end to keep from reaching for what he so desperately wanted—and touching her far knee. Their eyes would meet even as he slid his hand down down down, pushing her thighs inexorably apart. Baring her to him. “Never liked anything more.”

“Pretty words for a mercenary,” she’d say, arching. He’d be able to feel her heat even before he reached the apex of her thighs. “Did you—fuck, Bobby—did you read them in one of your comic books?”

And there, there, finally, the scalding _slick_ of her cunt. He’d have to break eye contact to look at last, watching as his big, rough fingers dragged oh-so-carefully across her folds. Her hair was just as black down here, sopping, soaking, practically burning him as he slid inside the tight clench of her.

As he hooked his finger and rode out the keening shudders.

“Holy heck,” he’d say, sliding in a second finger. His thumb would find the nub of her clit, pushing against the hood to stroke the way he’d know she wanted, circling, sliding, teasing her higher and higher with each breath. “Yeah. Grognak taught me everything I know, sweetheart.”

And that—the joke, or the endearment, or both—would have her laughing and shuddering as she came, clenching so tight around him his cock jerked in response. Flushed and thrashing beneath him, undulating like the sea, every bit of her straining toward him as if he were everything she wanted, as if—

MacCready came with a shout, hard and way too fast, barely muffling himself in time. He stared down at the picture, biting half-moons into his fist as his other hand cupped the head of his cock, catching the thick spurts as orgasm crashed through him like a supermutant’s fist. It had his knees trembling, knocking together in a way that spelled trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to step away from the bed and her picture spread out there like an omen.

Like a wish.

Like a…like a crazy person’s dream, and fuck, _fuck_. He closed his eyes, breath heaving, and finally trusted himself enough to drop his fist. He was still making little involuntary noises, but they were quieter now, less likely to bring people running. The whole aftermath moved through him in delicious shivers.

Slowly, MacCready slumped into a crouch.

“Holy heck,” he said, dropping his head forward. He hadn’t come like that in what felt like _years_. Hard, and fast, and brutal, like his entire body was lighting up. And he hadn’t even really thought of his own pleasure to make it happen, either. He hadn’t pictured her mouth on him, or her body clenching tight around his cock, or the way her breasts would bounce as he thrust into her.

No. He’d pictured her soft, breathy moans as he touched her. The way she’d flush and her lashes would flicker. The way she’d dissolve around him like sugar in water, and he was screwed. He was so, so irrevocably screwed.

Because even he wasn’t stubborn enough to convince himself that had been a fantasy fueled only by lust.

 _That_? That was the kind of fantasy a man in love would have—and now that Pandora’s box had sprung open around his heart, there was no putting the chilling realization back again.

“Well,” MacCready said, crouched by his bed, staring at the picture of his boss. She seemed to smile back at him, still so inviting it made his heart ache. “I guess I really _am_ well and truly screwed then, aren’t I?”


	14. Chapter 14

He took the opportunity to get clean—really clean—for the first time in ages.

Usually, MacCready relied on a mix of sand, citrus oil, and flat wooden paddles to scrape away the worst of the grime that collected after a day of hard work. Water was precious—clean water even more so—and he wasn’t so well off that he could afford more than the occasional rationed bottle to scrub himself down. Usually, he saved it for when he was well and truly _ripe_. Or, better yet, for when he had bullet holes that needed rinsing out before the stims could do their work.

He was a Wastelander through and through. The occasional rainshower did well enough for him. Or if he was desperate and had the rad-x handy, a quick dip in a freezing lake, complete with muffled cursing and shriveled-up balls.

Point was…this? This kind of slow, careless unwinding as he scooped water up between his hands and poured it over his head? It was something completely new to him. _Sinful_ in its waste, if he was the sort to worry much about sinning. Luxurious in a way that was completely out of his league.

Perfect. Fucking _perfect_ , each wave of cool-but-not-cold water unwinding yet another knot between his shoulder blades and making him wonder what the hell he’d been rationing all those bottles of water for anyway.

He stood in the ceramic tub, just under ankle-deep in water, and sighed happily. The water had gone a murky brown from all the crap that he’d sluiced off of him, but he still had a whole fresh basin perched on the edge of the sink to go. MacCready slid his hand down his slick chest, rediscovering tiny scars he’d all but forgotten, and grinned down at his wriggling toes.

If he stepped out of the house bare-assed naked now, he’d blind those prissy Minutemen with his lily white ass. See if he didn’t.

Speaking of the Minutemen… He heard a footfall in the hall and paused, head cocked, one hand reaching for that tiny toy-sized gun Ava had given him. It wasn’t that he mistrusted Garvey and the rest of the lot she had holed up here. It was just Robert Joseph MacCready wasn’t exactly in the business of trusting _anyone_ but Ava. That paranoia he’d built up like a fortress since losing Lucy had kept him alive this far; he wasn’t about to relax his guard now.

There was a faint pause before someone—someone with a big, heavy fist, if he had to guess—pounded on the closed bathroom door. “You about done in there, new guy?” an unfamiliar voice drawled.

Friendly-sounding. Friendlier than most anyone MacCready had ever met, at least. There was a laugh shivering under those words, as if he knew exactly what was taking MacCready so long in here. As if, hey, he got it too: just how brand shiny new this whole experience was.

Anyway, he probably wouldn’t come blasting down the door demanding his turn to take a shit or anything.

MacCready drew his hand back, leaving the gun where it sat, ready and waiting. _(Just in case_. Always, always, _just in case_.) “You got a few years?” he called back, picking up the basin of water and tipping it so another wave crested over his shoulders and down the lean line of his back. _Chrrriiiiiiiiiiist_ that felt amazing. “Probably be done in a few years. Three, maybe four at the very outside.”

In other words: _piss off_.

There was another pause, followed by low laughter. “All right, then. You be sure not to drown yourself in there.”

“I’ll be sure to call out if that looks to be a problem,” MacCready said, copying the easy drawl with a smirk. He heard a snorting laugh, then footsteps heading back down the hall—slow and easy. _Ambling_. He was sharing some fancy dweller house with an honest-to-fuck easy-going _ambler_ ; this whole Sanctuary thing was turning out to be not such a bad deal.

Still, he didn’t want to risk seeing if Smiley had a temper after all, so MacCready hurried up his shower, tipping back his head and pouring the rest of the basin over his blissfully closed eyes. It broke around his shoulders, splashing down the long line of him and washing away the very last of the grime. By the time he unplugged the tub and grabbed a waiting towel ( _towels_ , honest-to-fuck towels with only a couple patches needed to hold them together) he was squeaky clean and shivering and something dangerously close to content. He glanced at the cracked mirror, catching his reflection—hair tuffed up around his head, expression relaxed, lips twisted into a small grin—and realized…

Realized, _fuck_. For once, he actually looked something close to his real age.

MacCready grimaced, immediately dragging his fingers through his hair and scowling at his reflection; the mirror image scowled back, but there was no real heat to it. No _mean guy_ sniper toughness. Not even a full day in Sanctuary, and already he’d been stripped down to a softer, younger, more vulnerable version of himself. The version that held Ava against his chest and pressed surreptitious kisses to her hair. The version that was dumb enough to do a stupid thing like fall in love.

“Idiot,” he muttered to himself, wrapping the towel around his skinny hips. He grabbed the basin, the gun, and his shirt (Ava’s picture tucked safely in its front pocket) before making his way out of the bathroom—leaving that unnerving reflection behind.

“It’s all yours, Smiley!” he called as he padded across the hall. He heard movement in one of the bedrooms but was already stepping through and shutting his door before the other guy came out. A quick scan of the room proved that Ava had been right: no one had come in here to poke around in his shit while he was gone.

 _Huh_.

Shrugging to himself, MacCready rifled through the old drawers, pulling out clothes that had been left there for his use. They weren’t quite his size, but they were better than the filthy rags he’d been wearing—at least until he got those filthy rags nice and scrubbed clean again. Loose dark pants and an even looser white shirt, open at the throat. Mismatched but carefully darned socks. He rolled up the too-long sleeves to around his elbows and shoved his feet into his own boots, foregoing the coat and scarf just this once. He _did_ switch out Ava’s picture—no way was he leaving that around for just anyone to find—and slipped the little gun into the small of his back, where he could reach it if needed. Then, plunking his cap onto his still-damp and curling hair, MacCready headed out of his new house, light enough inside that he was actually _whistling_.

The day had swung from afternoon into dusk while he’d been, ah, occupied with the bath and…other things…and he glanced around with his face lifted, scenting the air. The smell of roasting meat hung around one of the newer buildings. Music played, and there were lights and tables with fucking umbrellas and everything on the wooden patio. Like a proper deck café or something. Potted plants anchored the corners of the deck where people were sitting about chatting and eating, and MacCready had to laugh a little at the sight. It was just so…so… _homey_. Comfortable in a way not even Diamond City ever managed.

Trust Ava to chisel out a world out of time here in her old neighborhood. Trust Ava to be willing to give it to useless jackasses like MacCready and the rest of them.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, watching the gathering of settlers from afar as the sun sank behind the horizon, leaving the sky streaked in shades of orange and rose and delicate violet. Stars were starting to come out, just visible overhead. A wind blew, cooling his cheeks and bringing with it the scent of smoke and game.

MacCready was pretty sure he’d never felt like this in his whole life; he didn’t trust it, couldn’t, but he felt it all the same. He wondered if he still had that young-and-happy look on his face.

 _Bah_. He rubbed at his jaw, looking away from the gathering of Minutemen and settlers, and caught sight of a light on the third floor of another new building. This one had Minutemen flags pasted out front and looked somehow more official than all the others. He swore he spotted Ava’s favorite shotgun propped just outside the door, and he was moving before he’d even told himself he could, crossing the street and weaving past humming turrets. The downstairs was dark, its desks piled with papers and various salvaged books. A shelf on one wall revealed stacks of those survival guides Ava liked to pick up, and another table housed her collection of weird-looking vault bobbleheads. The room was taken up by a huge rug centered by a big table, a crude map of the Commonwealth sketched out against the grain. There were metal pieces of different colors piled here or there, marking off the various settlements she’d founded— _they’d_ founded, in some cases—or raider nests they’d cleared.

MacCready leaned against the table, poking at a bit of string glued down between settlements. A supply line? Looked like it.

Overhead, the wooden floorboards creaked.

He glanced up, heart giving a ridiculous little lurch. He hadn’t spotted Ava having dinner with the others (and, yes, fine, he’d definitely _looked_ ), and since she’d have long ago gotten cleaned up, she was probably finishing her report with Garvey now. He should wait down here for them to finish.

Yeeeeeaah…no.

He pushed away from the table and headed to the stairs. Screw waiting, anyway. He wanted to see her. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to look her square in the _eyes_ after what he’d done earlier, but…hell. Actually being around Ava trumped any lingering embarrassment, right? His pulse actually picked up speed as he moved to the second story (more official-looking storage, including what looked to be manikins dressed in Minutemen garb…weird), then started up the stairs to the third. His palms felt clammy and his stomach twisted into complicated shapes. His throat was tight.

Being in love felt a lot like heartburn, now that he thought about it.

“Boss?” MacCready called as he slowed on the last few steps, just in case she and Garvey were talking through some top secret Minuteman something-or-another. Or, even worse, in case it wasn’t Ava up there at all. He pushed aside the Minuteman flag-turned-curtain that blocked off the main room from the steps, slipping inside the warm light of the small third story room and glancing around to take stock. It all happened in stages from there.

First, he noticed the dresser, thrown open to reveal a line of Ava’s familiar-looking clothes.

Then he noticed a vanity with its silver-backed brushes and mysterious pots of makeup and hair stuff.

Then his slowly widening eyes caught on the _bed_ , tucked beneath a canopy and, yeah, definitely wide enough for two—fuck, he hadn’t even realized he’d been _wondering_.

Until finally, finally, his gaze caught on Ava herself—stepping out of a large tin bathtub, hair hanging in wet coils about her shoulders, lush body wrapped in a towel that barely bothered to cover the tempting swell of her hips. She was scrubbed clean, face soft and pretty without its red war paint…and her brows were slowly lifting as he just _stood there_ gaping at her.

“Is something wrong, Bobby?” Ava asked, pushing the long, _wet_ fall of her hair back. Exposing the perfect line of her throat. _Jesus fuck_.

“Uh,” he said, like some kind of idiot. His throat was completely dry and his tongue seemed stuck to the top of his mouth. She was more or less decently covered—the key bits were, at least—but he could see the faintest hint of cleavage; the bared grace of her shoulders and arms; the miles-long _legs_ that, just over an hour before, he’d been picturing wrapped around his waist. And beneath that towel…

 _Fuck_ , he thought, brain turning over and over like a dying engine. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck._

Oh _holy fuck_ , he was getting hard again.

She just gave him a _look_ when he awkwardly half-spun away. “Oh come on,” Ava said. “You’ve seen more of me when doctoring wounds. I’m perfectly covered.”

“That’s _different_ ,” he said, tempted to clap a hand over his eyes or make an all-too-awkward break for it. But running…running would send the wrong message. When facing down a predator, the last thing you wanted to do was encourage them to chase you. (Unless it was a supermutant suicider or a deathclaw, in which case _running the fuck away_ was pretty much survival tip #1.) Instead, he went for his usual fallback whenever he was uncomfortable: idle bitching. “You almost done, anyway? I thought you’d be ready to eat by now; I’m _starving_.”

He pretended to riffle through her rack of comics as if he could actually see what he was looking at. As if he weren’t hyperaware of her standing there just out of the corner of his eye, arms crossed over her (gorgeous, full) breasts, one brow (on her soft, delicate face) lifted. He’d seen her hair up and he’d seen it down, but something about seeing it _dripping_ was doing things to his body. Really unfortunate, really filthy, really embarrassing things because…

Because he couldn’t help but imagine reaching out to tug that towel aside. He couldn’t help but imagine chasing a drop of water as it fell from the ends of that inky-black hair, wending slowly, slowly, slowly down the gentle slope of her belly.

Right now, he _couldn’t help_ but imagine her climbing into her bed and letting the towel fall open around her, its own kind of Chantilly Lace and—

 _No, no, argh, stop. Stop it_.

“Bobby,” Ava said, hand brushing his arm, and oh God, when did she get so close? MacCready jerked his head away and flushed beet red. His stomach was squirming with awareness of her and he was never so grateful for oversized clothes as he was now. “What’s wrong? Are you…are you settling in okay? Did something happen?”

He made a gargling noise in an attempt to grunt a negative.

She sighed. “I’m sorry,” Ava said— _still touching him_. She wasn’t like this with anyone else. She wasn’t so hands-on, and usually he thought that was a good thing. Like he really meant something to her. Like he was special. But now, now he was all turned upside-down and topsy-turvy in his head, and he wanted it to mean a hell of a lot more than it did. He wanted it to be…to be about wanting him to understand, or wanting him closer, or just wanting him, _period_. He wanted it to be some kind of precursor to sliding her hand down to hook her fingers in his; thread them together in a symbolic gesture that said all sorts of things he knew he didn’t have the guts to voice.

Things like: _I care about you._

Or: _I want you close._

Or even: _I love you._

And, fuck, Ava was talking in that low, soothing-the-scared-animals voice she had, hand _still_ on his arm and body smelling like clean skin and something sweet—something he wanted to pull into his lungs and hold there forever. If he looked at her right now, with her face all soft and scrubbed clean the way only _he_ was allowed to see, he’d buckle. He’d just lose his mind with wanting so much.

“…comfortable here. This is your home as much as it is anyone else’s. I’ll talk to him, if you need me to.”

“Um, sure. Wait, no. No, no thanks,” he said, trying to shake himself out this haze without her noticing. To force his brain back on track. MacCready carefully slid the Grognak back into its place on the rack, regretting every deep breath that filled his lungs with her scent. “It’s good. You’re freaking out over nothing, boss. I just wanted to see if you were hungry—that’s all.”

“That’s _not_ all,” Ava countered, because she could read him better than any of those old law books she liked. “Bobby—”

He shrugged off her grip and turned fully away, retreating. “I’m just gonna…” he managed. He was blowing shit up left and right and needed to get out of there before she _knew_. God, how stupid was he that he’d have some kind of world-changing revelation—love; _love_ , like an idiot song, making his whole body ache with a deep seed of longing—and go straight to her. Of _course_ she’d know something was up. Even if he’d stumbled across her dressed in a hazmat suit with only a foggy glimpse of her face visible, she’d know because he’d never been good at hiding what he felt. He’d never been—

Ava grabbed his hand, catching it in hers, and pulled him back with surprising strength. MacCready stumbled and swallowed a curse, eyes dropping immediately down before jerking up; between that skimpy-ass towel and her gorgeous eyes, he figured he’d be better off risking the eyes.

Only…only, fuck, God, _no_. No, he wasn’t, because she was looking at him like no one else in the Commonwealth did: like she gave a fuck. Like she worried about him. Like somehow, some way, he’d gotten under her skin just like she’d gotten under his, and she wouldn’t be at peace in her own head until she’d managed to convince herself he was happy in _his_.

Like…MacCready actually mattered.

And that was a nuclear mine exploding in his gut. That was the bombs falling and the world ending…being reborn…over and over and over again.

 _God_ , he loved her so much.

“Bobby,” Ava said, voice low, expression gentle. “Please, tell me what’s wrong. I want to help.” And those weren’t the eyes of a liar. That wasn’t the face of someone who was just saying what he so desperately wanted to hear. She _meant_ it. Every word.

Which was why it was so easy to forget common sense in a sudden surge of emotion and step close, chapped hands cupping the delicate line of her jaw…and kiss her.

 _Soft_. Oh, God, her lips were so _soft_. _Warm_ as she sucked in a surprised breath. He brushed his thumbs along her cheeks, eyes closing at the sheer pleasure of kissing her—long and slow and aching, feeding off the quiet noise she made, sinking into her heat. _Finally_ , MacCready thought, brushing his tongue across the bottom swell of her mouth. _Fuck yes, finally._ It was exactly what he’d been wanting for so long. He could sink into it forever.

Which was, of course, the moment when common sense caught up with him. _Hard_. MacCready jerked away with a startled yelp, staring at Ava—who was staring _back_ as if she’d never seen him before. Her lips were parted, _slick_. Her cheeks flushed light pink as he watched and her eyes were going wider and wider and wider, this thing between them finally laid bare, MacCready exposed, so screwed, so abso-fucking-lutely screwed.

She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth, _wedding ring_ catching the light, and if MacCready could have curled in on himself and disappeared right there, he would have. “Bobby,” she began, sounding so very shaken.

He stared into her face—her beautiful, beloved, trusting face—and did the only thing someone like him could in this sort of situation. “… ** _FUCK!_** ” a panicked Robert Joseph MacCready shouted…then turned on his heel and _ran_.


	15. Chapter 15

“I’m just gonna…” MacCready said, turning away.

She caught his hand before he could finish shutting her out, tugging him back to face her. Something had happened in the few scant hours between entering Sanctuary and now. Something had him running scared, _spooked_ , as if he’d somehow found himself backed into a corner with only a shotgun and a prayer.

Was it the story of how she’d gotten here? Was it all finally sinking in? Or was something else the matter? Preston sometimes got a little too protective—was that it?

“Bobby,” Ava said, voice dropping low, gentle. So gentle. She wanted to tangle their fingers together but wasn’t sure she dared. MacCready could be so unpredictable when it came to those little gestures of affection. “Please tell me what’s wrong. I want to help.”

She’d clawed her way past the apocalypse, through Raiders and Deathclaws and Mirelurks and feral Ghouls. She’d faced down her own fears time and time again—she’d faced down _herself_ , her own weaknesses, her yowling, animal-hurt vulnerabilities, and more times than not, she’d done it with this man at her side.

MacCready had done so much for her by just _being_ there; couldn’t he see that Ava would do absolutely anything for him in return?

_Trust me, Bobby_ , she didn’t, wouldn’t beg. _Trust me as much as I trust you._

And then suddenly something changed in his eyes and he was looking at her like…fuck, like nothing she’d ever experienced. Like she was the sacred and the profane all wrapped up in one. Like she was everything he wanted and it was _killing him_ not to be touching her. The shock of that, the _intensity_ of it, stole her breath in a ragged gasp as MacCready suddenly stepped forward and reached up to cup her face with those warm, capable, calloused hands.

_Oh_ , Ava thought, heart beating like mad in her chest. Her eyes fluttered closed—then opened again, because all at once she _had_ to be watching him as their mouths met in a first kiss that felt like the nuclear bombs falling all over again. They rained down around her, leaving her absolutely _wrecked_ by the sheer _emotion_ in that simple brush of lips. In the way he cupped her cheeks like she was so very, very precious.

Not even Nate had looked at her like this. Not even Nate had held her, kissed her, made her _feel_ this way.

She let her lashes flicker closed as she sank into the oh-so-perfect inevitability of their kiss. He tasted sweet, minty from the homemade toothpaste they used here. His skin smelled like soap and clean skin with that familiar layer of… _gun oil. Pine. Muttfruit and leather and bullet casings._

_Oh, fuck, yes._

His thumbs rasped along her cheeks in the gentlest caress, and Ava gasped soundlessly when his tongue brushed the bottom curve of her mouth. The heat of it— _slick_ —was almost shockingly arousing, and she rocked up onto the balls of her feet, greedy for more as her stomach began to _burn_ with growing desire. God, she wanted his mouth all over her; she wanted his _hands_. What would those callouses feel like spreading the folds of her cunt, rubbing maddening circles about her clit as they kissed and kissed and kissed?

_Yes, yes, yes, yes_.

Oh, fuck, _yes_ , she wanted him. She wanted him above her, wanted him in her, wanting him laughing against the curve of her neck, wanted him glaring with more affection than heat as she pocketed yet another random bit of junk, wanted him tucking back a loose strand of dark hair as he _looked at her_ with those eyes that said for him, she hung the moon—just as she was. Not some perfect trophy wife. Not some prize at the end of a long game. Not some incomprehensible hellion he never could seem to tame.

But her.

Just _her_.

He _saw her_ the way Nate never could, and oh God, oh God, she did, she loved him. She loved him so much. She—

With a strangled noise, MacCready suddenly pulled away, breaking the kiss. He stared at her, eyes gone _huge_. His lips were wet, Ava noticed, slowly reaching up to touch her own damp mouth. His chest rose and fell as if he’d been racing the wind.

She understood the feeling. “Bobby,” Ava murmured, shaken down to the core and so blindingly, uncomplicatedly _happy_ she didn’t know what to do. It had been so long since she’d felt this way that she felt blinded by it, like that first step outside the vault and into breaking sunlight. _Oh, yes_ , she thought, letting the moment wash over her. _I do. I do love you._

Which was, of course, his cue to do the most absolutely, quintessentially MacCready thing possible. **_“…fuck!”_** he yelled, _right_ into her shocked-stupid face—then turned on his heel and _bolted_ like mutant hounds were on his heels.

Ava stared after him, frozen, listening to the rapid pound of his retreating footsteps. Reality sank in at the sudden _bam_ of him…what, leaping down the last few steps onto the floor below, as if he thought she would _actually_ come chasing after him wearing nothing but a towel? She blinked rapidly, staring at where he had been just a moment before.

What.

The.

Actual.

_Fuck_?

She still had her fingertips pressed to her lips as if she could capture and keep his kiss— _his kiss_ ; holy shit, Robert Joseph MacCready had just _kissed her_. Through the cracks and greaves of her new sanctuary, she could just make out the whirr of servos and a jaunty, “Ah, hello sir!” followed by an immediate, “And goodbye, sir!” as MacCready no doubt left a dust trail in his wake as he _flew_ past her proper British butler. The Road Runner in those old cartoons, and she the coyote left with nothing but a threadbare towel and a growing sense of determination.

And that, _that_ , was enough to have Ava breaking down into sudden, snorting giggles. She doubled over, wet hair hanging in a curtain about her face as she gasped in shuddery breaths, utterly _losing it_ every time she pictured Codsworth reaching up to tilt his little top hat at MacCready’s rapidly fleeing backside.

Oh God, oh God, she was going to choke. She was going to—

Ava took a stumbling step back toward her bed and landed on the creaking mattress with a heavy _thump_. She was shaking she was laughing so hard, breath gone harsh and serrated as she clutched her sides. The towel was coming loose around her, edging her toward indecency, but oh, oh, oh she couldn’t find enough fucks to _give_ —not with the taste of mercenary on her tongue and the memory of that painfully visible _oh shit oh shit oh shit_ expression crossing his sharp-featured face.

She hadn’t been the victim of a kiss-and-run since she was _nine_. At least this time, the boy had the decency not to pull her braids on the way out. _Oh good goddamn,_ what a wonderfully strange turn for her life to take.

What a strange man she had gone and fallen so completely for.

Ava wiped at her eyes, hysterical laughter slowly beginning to fade into something warm and inescapably _fond_. Trust MacCready to stumble head-first into everything. He’d been a brash, wonderfully bitchy companion for so long that even the way he whined made her smile. She trusted him with everything she was; more importantly, she trusted him with everything she _wasn’t_. She could let down her guard around him, show the vulnerable underbelly she kept hidden so carefully away from everyone else. It seemed inevitable that desire would creep in to thread through their growing affection to…

To…

_What_? She still didn’t know exactly what it was MacCready wanted. And it wasn’t like he hung around long enough to tell her. All she knew with any certainty was what _she_ wanted—and that, quite simply, was everything.

Ava stood, still smiling to herself as she tugged free the towel and tossed it blindly toward the foot of her bed. She walked naked to her battered old dresser and pulled out some fresh clothing. Not the vault suit, though it hung by her bed already washed and dried thanks to Codworth. No, for the first time in a _long_ time, she didn’t feel the need to slither back into that skin she’d shed ages ago. She selected a simple lace-up tunic and a skirt instead, slipping it over her curvy hips with an un-self-conscious shimmy. It was patched and repatched with colorful squares of cloth, nothing at all like the expensive pencil skirts she used to wear to work. Ava straightened, smoothing her hands over the old fabric, and found it suited her just fine. And when she tugged at the front of the shirt, it settled a little off her shoulders in a display that wasn’t altogether bad.

She caught her eye as she began twisting her drying hair up into a simple knot, laughing at her own reflection. She felt giddy inside, buoyant. Like she was gussying up for a freaking _date_.

Ava slipped her feet into simple work shoes and snagged her handgun on the way out. She didn’t even pause by her vanity, where the precious brushes and tins of makeup waited. It was…freeing, in a way, to forego the war paint this once. She smiled to herself as she clomped down the steps, setting foot outside stripped down to her most vital self—breathing deep for what felt like the first time in ages and unafraid of the consequences.

She was strong enough not to let the Wasteland drag her down. She was certain enough of herself that she could be the badass warrior and the sole survivor _and_ the hopeful lover all at once.

As she glanced up and down the familiar-yet-not streets of Sanctuary, as her gaze fell on the house she’d once shared with Nate, Ava let out a soft sigh—and with it, let go of the crushing weight she hadn’t even been aware she’d been carrying all this time.

_Goodbye, Nate_ , she thought, bittersweet but hopeful. _I wish I could have given you what you wanted, but in the end…I guess I’m glad I’m not the sort of woman you needed._ No, instead, she was a fighter. She was a Valkyrie.

“Ah, good evening, mum!” Codsworth said, tipping that little tophat with the utmost sincerity. “And may I say, you look quite fetching tonight.”

Ava turned a blinding smile on her companion, feeling a new sort of relaxation settling into her limbs. There were still demons to fight and battles to wage, but God, she hadn’t felt so good in _years_. “Good evening, Codsworth,” she said. There were little spangled disks sewn into the hem of her skirt; they jangled quietly with each move she made. “Did you happen to get a good look at where MacCready ran off to?”

“Your gentleman caller?” he asked, and she nearly snorted in delight at the description. “Why yes—he went in that direction. He looked to be in _quite_ the hurry.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Ava said, bemused. “Thank you, Codsworth. I’ll see you later.”

He tipped his hat again, metal parts whirring happily. “Have a _good_ evening,” he said before floating away.

Ava tied her holster about her hips and checked her ammo before setting off in the direction Codsworth had indicated. She was aware of several curious eyes following her as she passed through town. Mama Murphy gave her a beatific smile and Sturges wolf-whistled teasingly. Preston glanced up from the weapons table and nearly did a double-take before pulling himself together and nodding his usual greeting.

“General,” he said, a hint of a question in his voice.

She just smiled and brushed back a loose coil of hair. “Preston,” she said, passing him by. She started to jog as she headed out of town, putting her fingers to her lips and whistling sharply. There was a crack of wood nearby, followed by a bark as Dogsmeat came barreling out of the brush, tongue lolling. He fell into step with her easily, paws eating up ground as they left the ruined road and veered off into mottled brown-and-green grass, weaving through restored street lights and humming power lines. “Where’s MacCready, boy?” she said, and he barked again in response—immediately heading toward the right of the old bridge.

Ava grabbed the trailing ends of her skirt just before they hit the shallow water, lifting the hem out of the way as she waded across. She already had a pretty good idea where MacCready may have gone to ground—hopefully not literally—but she continued to let Dogmeat lead the way until she spotted the mercenary off in the distance, on a gentle slope that would be both hidden from town and easily defensible. Hunched over with his head in his hands, knees drawn up, rifle nowhere to be seen.

She slowed to a jog, then stopped, reaching out a hand to Dogmeat. He turned, tongue lolling, before moving to accept a quick caress. “Thank you, boy,” she murmured, scratching just behind one ear. “Now take guard and make sure no one wanders out this way, okay?” Ava looked up, watching as MacCready just sat there, heels of his palms dug into his eyes, head shaking back and forth, back and forth, as if he were cussing himself out for being ten kids of fool. “This isn’t something I want a third party to witness.”

Dogmeat barked once in agreement and took off. Ava watched as, some distance away, MacCready slowly lifted his head.

_Busted_. That’s what his expression was practically screaming for the first few seconds. But then slowly it began to change as his eyes dropped up and down her body, taking her in. Ava stood perfectly still and watched him as he watched _her_. As he studied the carelessly loose bundle of her hair, the scrubbed-clean face, the loose and pretty sway of her clothing. She could see the gut-punch admiration in his eyes even from this distance, and she suddenly found herself fighting not to blush like a schoolgirl. _Charmed_. She was so fucking _charmed_ by everything this man did—even when it drove her absolutely insane.

_I’ve got it so bad_ , she thought, but even that just made her smile as she finally stepped forward, moving with a deliberate sway to her hips. His eyes dropped almost as if he couldn’t help himself, staring at the gentle back-and-forth. Ava watched as he wet his lips, then forced himself to look up again. There was heat blooming across _his_ cheeks too, and that was enough to remind her how young he actually was. Somewhere in the early part of his twenties, a few years younger than herself. Fragile in his own way, though she was smart enough to keep _that_ thought to herself.

_This doesn’t have to end in tragedy_ , she wanted to tell him; didn’t dare. Not yet, at least. _This thing that’s been growing between us for so long doesn’t have to leave you reeling_.

She finally came to a stop in front of him, so close the ends of her skirt actually brushed his calves. She could see the way he gripped the ground as if hunting for purchase; his chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. _Scared_. He’d gone running scared—but of what? Of how she would react? Or of how he felt? They’d both lost so much. It would only make sense if he wanted, needed, to shield his heart.

Or it could be something else altogether. There was no way she could know the truth unless he told her—unless she stopped letting them dance around each other and _asked_. And of course, Ava being Ava, there was only one way she could bring herself to ask so deeply personal a question:

_With style_.

Snagging the ends of her skirt, lifting it out of the way—and flashing a generous expanse of thigh in the process—Ava swung a leg over the hill of his drawn-up knees and sank down into the warmth of MacCready’s lap. She rode out the startled buck of his body as he instinctively scrambled up straight, her body settling into the cradle of his hips and her thighs clamping tight tight tight about his waist. She tangled red-tipped fingers in the simple homespun fabric of his shirt and held on as MacCready stared at her, wide-eyed and hunted and…oh, yes, increasingly turned on.

Well, that answered one question.

“What,” he began, sputtering. “Ah, Ava… Boss…”

_“Ava_ ,” she stressed, patiently riding out his panic. She shifted to get more comfortable, bare skin pressed against an inescapable—and growing—bulge in his loose trousers. _Jesus fuck_. “You know me well enough by now, Bobby, to realize that if something runs, I am going to _have_ to chase it to ground.”

He stared at her, eyes huge, pupils blowing wide. When she shifted again, he very nearly whined. “Oh my God,” MacCready said.

“I _may_ take pity on you,” Ava added, leaning closer. Close enough that she could feel each ragged breath against her parted lips. She was already so wet it was a little embarrassing. She hadn’t bothered with undergarments, and the rasp of his pants against her cunt…the feel of her own rough top against her tightly beaded nipples…the way his breath was coming faster and faster, as if he was getting wound up just by her _sitting there_ …it was all coming together to drive her mad. “Maybe.”

“If?” he asked, hands spreading across the lush curve of her hips. His eyes dropped from hers as if he had to _see_ his palms against her softly rounded body. As if he could hardly believe this was happening. MacCready swallowed roughly, grip going tight—erection thick and hot and rather urgent now against her, separated by only one layer of cloth—and then forced himself to look up into her eyes again.

And oh, _oh_ , the look on his face. Dazed and hopeful and stupidly aroused and _worshipful_ , as if she were the answer to a prayer he hadn’t dared whisper. That answered its own question, and she shivered in response. _I love you_ , she could have said right then, and she was increasingly certain he would have answered with a broken, _I love you too_.

“ _If_ ,” she said, hands spanning his wiry shoulders, loving the feel of him against her, “you tell me exactly why you ran away…and what it’ll take to get you to kiss me again.”


	16. Chapter 16

MacCready’s first thought when he looked up from his panicked slump and spotted Ava was: _oh shit._

Then, when she was walking toward him with that sway in her step, spangled (spangled! Like she wasn’t some kind of merciless tank that mowed down everything in her way; and _holy crap_ , that was hot enough to set his skin on fire) skirt dusting the dried-up grass in a careless whisper: _oh shit, oh shit_.

When she settled into his lap, pinning him in place with her knees locked against his skinny hips: _oh shit, oh shit, oh shit_.

When she holy God _rocked forward_ , rubbing up against the erection he couldn’t will away to save his Goddamned miserable life, hotter than sin, hotter than hell, hotter than anything he’d ever experienced: _oh shit, oh shit, oh fuck me, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit._

And finally, finally, when she pressed close, all sweet-smelling skin and beautiful dark eyes, expression cracked open like the best gift he ever received and said, voice a low husk he’d follow just about anywhere: “I _may_ take pity on you.”

Then, _then_ , all he had was: _Oh._

Just… _oh_ , eyes going wide, breaths coming in ragged pants against her parted lips. She was so close he could feel her up and down his body, heat sinking into him like rads. And Jesus fuck, but he must’ve been crazier than those Children of the Atom because he was just _soaking_ her up greedily, staring at her like she could disappear with every blink.

MacCready wet his bottom lip, and almost moaned when her lashes flicked down, eyes following the movement. She didn’t have any of that stuff on her face, but she’d never looked more beautiful—cheeks flushed a bright pink, eyes darker than he’d ever seen them, hair loose enough it would come tumbling down if he dared to reach out and touch.

_Soft_ and unspooling and giving herself to him in a way that was just about going to blow his mind. He shifted, testing, and nearly had a heart attack when she shifted _back_ , hips giving a delicate roll as if she was just as desperate for him as he was for her. Which was… _Christ_ , it was _crazy_. It was crazy, crazy good, and he was sure enough going to lose his mind if he didn’t hang on tight.

“Maybe,” Ava added, drawing out the word in a tease.

Could he touch her? Should he touch her? Hell, if this wasn’t the signal for _go,_ he didn’t know what was. MacCready cleared his throat and carefully dropped his hands to her hips—then immediately gripped tight, kneading ( _oh shit, oh fuck_ ) soft, soft curves. Ava had a body like no one else he’d ever met, all pre-War healthy and gorgeous and, and, shit, he needed to get her naked or he was pretty sure he’d up and die. “If?” he asked, voice strangled.

MacCready leaned back and looked down, staring at the rough grip he had on those lush hips, on the place where their bodies met. If they were naked, she’d be _right over him_ , cunt pressed snug against his cock, easy as anything to shift that gorgeous body and ease his hips forward and—

And—

And _fuck_ , he needed to get a grip before just the _picture_ became enough to undo him. He swallowed back a strangled noise and forced himself to look up, meeting her eyes again. He felt dazed, like he’d taken a blow to the head. So much was happening so fast he wasn’t sure he could keep up. Sanctuary and the pin-up and the truth about her past and the truth about his _feelings_ and now, now _this_ , now _her_. Stripped bare for all that she was still wearing clothes, honest and brave and trusting him like only Lucy had before.

Showing him a glimpse of her heart and believing he wouldn’t punch his fist inside and break it to pieces.

_I love you_ , he thought, holding on to Ava for all he was worth. Trying to be just as brave—to show her just as much; all the things he had such a piss-poor time saying. _I love you, you reckless, stupid, brave crazy woman. I love you, and I want you, and I…I got your six._

Shit, that wasn’t very romantic, was it?

Oh well; wasn’t like she could hear his thoughts chasing each other like radroaches. (Right?)

“ _If_ ,” Ava said, hands spanning his shoulders, beginning to push at his collar, “you tell me exactly why you ran away…and what it’ll take to get you to kiss me again.”

“Uh,” he said, eloquently. He kept his eyes locked on hers, swallowing around all the swirling emotions he didn’t have half the words for. Honesty. That was a good place to start, right? “Uh, well, for starters, I figured if I ran fast enough, you couldn’t shoot my kneecaps out.”

Ava laughed and reached up to knock back his hat. It fell, tumbling across the grass; MacCready swallowed. “Not true,” she said. “I could have sniped you from the window.”

“Not and kept your towel up,” he pointed out.

She shrugged a shoulder, hips rolling forward again—slowly, slowly, slowly. Fuck, it was going to drive him crazy. Crazier. “So my towel would fall down. So what? Mama Murphy’s seen tits before.”

“Not like yours,” MacCready breathed, then felt like ten kinds of idiot. He knew women well enough (though maybe not as well as he sometimes liked to pretend) to figure that? Wasn’t the right thing to say.

Except _holy shit_ , maybe it _was_ the right thing for a dame like Ava, because she just _grinned_ at him, all dazzling white teeth, and leaned back to grab the hem of her blouse. “What?” she purred, straight out of his deepest fantasy— _and tugged her shirt off_ , shaking her loosely cascading black hair free when one of the buttons snagged. It fell around them both in a dark cloud even as her shirt— _her shirt_ —went sailing some yards back, leaving her bare from the waist up; breasts pale and big and tipped tight-coral-pink, just begging for his mouth, his tongue, his _teeth_. “Are you saying you like what you see?”

“ _Uh_ ,” he managed, hands lifting—then immediately jerking away, panicked gaze meeting hers. She was in his lap and asking him to kiss her…did that mean he was allowed to _touch_? Jesus, he hoped so. “Uh, um, can I…” He swallowed. “Holy _crap_ , boss—Ava—I’d really like to…”

Ava just bit her bottom lip, watching her from beneath her lashes, and nodded. But before he could even twitch in her direction, she was catching his hands in hers and bringing them up to cup the pure silk of her breasts.

Ava squeezed his hands and MacCready squeezed her breasts in return, _staring_. When her thumbs brushed across his scarred knuckles, he dragged his own thumbs along the tight peaks of her breasts, teasing the puckered skin with ragged thumbnails. The noise Ava made—liquid and hot and caught in the back of her throat—was enough to have him jerking up against her, bucking them both off the soft earth for one _perfect_ thrust.

She cried out, head falling back to expose the long, pale line of her throat, hands slapping against the grass behind her—entire body arched in a sinuous bow as she rode the unsteady rut of his hips. Black hair fell in a waterfall behind her, and her breasts—fuck, but her breasts were thrust up _right there_ , right into his palms. He thumbed the nipples again, again, riding out the _ohfuckgood_ grind of her hips before suddenly darting down and taking the peak of a breast into his mouth.

He’d been dreaming about this for longer than he wanted to admit to himself, lips closing around her skin, tongue swirling hot about the nipple. Ava cried out and grabbed for two fistfuls of his hair, yanking him closer as she dragged her hips urgently across the near-painful bulge of his erection. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he was so turned on he didn’t know which way was up, but MacCready just held steady as he tongued her nipples one after the other, sucking almost too rough, using his teeth to drag across the swollen pink tips when she sobbed a breath, desperate to have all of her.

All or nothing, right?

MacCready moaned against her skin and pressed calloused fingertips tight against Ava’s heaving belly, just above the waist of her skirt. He made a low noise—inquiring, needing permission—that was lost in a shattered breath when she caught the drawstring keeping the spangled material about her hips and yanked it open. _Yes, yes, fuck, yes_. MacCready pressed his hand past the gently sagging waist of her skirt, kissing up her sternum to slide his tongue across her clavicle, up her neck, to her—

“ _Fucking Christ_ ,” he moaned, finding no underwear—nothing, _nothing_ but hot, soft, _slick_ skin. He caught Ava’s earlobe between his teeth, his own hips rocking up urgently as he pressed two fingers past the dripping wet folds of her, dragging across her labia and up to her clit. “Fucking _fuck_ , Ava.”

“ _Bobby,_ ” Ava said, turning her face with a shuddery breath. He could feel it against his parted lips, serrated, shattered, as he deliberately slid gun-calloused fingertips in a tightening circle around her clit. She keened, hips pushing forward, grip on his hair so tight he thought she might snatch him bald as a ghoul—and fuck, yeah, no problem; he’d steal one of those Minutemen hats and rock the hell out of a smooth scalp if it meant watching as she fucking tried to ride his fingers, shuddering and quaking and wild as anything.

She was so beautiful, so perfect, losing her _mind_ against him—and in that moment, MacCready slid his fingers inside her, thumb twisting to rub tighttighttight circles around the throb of her clit as he turned his face and caught her mouth in the fucking kiss of his life.

It was long and instantly deep and _filthy_ , tongue fucking past her parted lips, twining with hers. Hungry in a way he couldn’t ever remember being before, needing to swallow every single sound she made until they filled him to bursting. He took control of that kiss even as he grabbed her hips with his free hand, stilling the urgent _writhe_ of her body and—just— _making_ —her—take—it. Take the too-slow, rhythmic thrust of his fingers, take the measured flick of his thumb, take the kiss that sank deeper and deeper and deeper as he felt her body clenching around him. Breasts heaving, hips shuddering, muscles quivering and skin steaming like spent bullet casings as she tensed tighter and tighter and tighter—close, close, so very close…

He _felt_ the first jerky shudder of her orgasm deep inside Ava’s body even before she cried out into the kiss. Muscles rippled around his fingers, silky hot and _wet_ as all get-out, trembling like water after a stone’d been chucked in. MacCready whined deep in his chest and swallowed the frantic thrust of Ava’s tongue, free hand sliding up to cup her face as he carefully carried her through it—thumb stroking over and over again, pointer and index finger thrusting inside the clench of her, sending her just as high as he could before gently easing her back.

Gradually, the stroke of his thumb began to slow. His fingers curled deep inside her body and went still. Ava collapsed forward, breaking the kiss at last to rest her forehead against his bony shoulder; her breaths came in shallow heaves.

And MacCready, his heart full to bursting, turned his face and softly brushed his lips across a sweat-damp temple. He closed his eyes, staying there—hand trapped between their bodies, lips pressed against her hair, breathing in the scent of her.

So in love he didn’t know what to _do_ with it all.

“You good?” he finally murmured after a long, steadying silence. Carefully, MacCready tugged his hand free, out past the open waist of her skirt. He wanted to suck on his slick fingers; he wasn’t sure if he should. Everything had happened so fast, he wasn’t sure what the boundaries of this…this… _this_ was.

Ava made a low noise that could have been a word, arms going loose and sweet around his neck. She nuzzled back against him, arching into the brush of his lips before dipping her face to catch his mouth in a kiss. It was soft and lingering—a slow, languorous stroke of lips and tongue, just hot enough to make him shiver. His body tightened in response, but MacCready fought to control his own reaction, hands gripping her hips to keep them carefully canted away from his cock (so hard, fuck, so hard it was a constant ache) as he melted into that perfect kiss.

Slick, hot, tangling, _twining_ , delving deeper and deeper as it slowly picked up speed. Ava made a low noise and tried to press closer, gorgeous breasts rubbing up against the front of his shirt. MacCready felt so naked without his usual layers, stripped down to a simple shirt and trousers, hyperaware of the naked _heat_ of her cunt so very close.

She dropped her hands and caught the end of his shirt, tugging it up. They had to pull apart just long enough for Ava to pull it over his head and cast it aside, grin flashing sudden and sharp at the sight of him. MacCready had a moment to feel self-conscious—aware of his skinny chest, his malnourished frame, his scars mapping bullet holes and blades that had made it past his defenses—before Ava was sliding those red-tipped nails down his pecs to the line of pale golden-brown hair dusting his belly. She met his eyes and laughed when she caught the button of his trousers, popping it open easily.

“Holy fuck,” MacCready said, like a prayer. He didn’t even try to control the curse words spilling out of him. Later. He’d worry about all that _later._ “Holy fucking hell, you’re some kind of she-demon.”

“You _like_ it,” Ava purred, and all he could do was groan his _wholehearted_ agreement as those capable hands pushed past the open fly of his trousers and tugged him free.

He was—

He was—

Holy _fuck_ , he was hard. MacCready leaned back on one hand, cock flushed red and painfully stiff against his belly. He sucked in uneven breaths, staring at Ava as she stared at him, feeling cracked open and exposed before her—and yet, _trusting_ her all the same. Hell, maybe even more than he had before. These last few hours had knitted them together in ways he couldn’t have imagined, taking the devotion building in his chest and turning it into something new. Something he thought could be forever—or at least however long the Wasteland gave them.

She wet her lips and looked up at him, meeting his eyes.

“This isn’t a one-and-done for me, Bobby,” Ava said. Her voice was deliciously husky. “Fair warning.”

He just let out a harsh breath, reaching up with his free hand to drag rough knuckles across the smooth silk of her cheek. “Thank God for that,” he said, a little shaky. Heartfelt. And, yeah, horny as all hell.

The smile that spread across Ava’s face was dazzling it was so bright—those gleaming white teeth flashing against the soft bitten-pink of her mouth as she rose up onto her knees. Her breasts swayed with the motion, spangles on her skirt catching the sunlight and sending it refracting all around them in bright, darting beams. Like stars or fireflies or sparks or, or, or a thousand and one other hopelessly besotted metaphors his brain might have churned up if she wasn’t reaching down to grip his steadily leaking cock with one capable fist. _Jesus_.

“Wait,” MacCready said, then nearly thwapped _himself_ up the side of the head for saying anything. What the hell was wrong with him? But Ava was waiting—grip tight on his achingly hard cock, body pressed over his, one brow arched in question. “Uh… The Wasteland makes it shit-hard to have kids, but my, uh, swimmers work just fine and _you_ didn’t grow up soaking in rads, so…”

So, hell, as much as he wanted to just grip her hips and ease himself up into the molten heat of her, they _needed_ to have this talk.

“It’s okay, Bobby,” Ava said, leaning forward to brush her lips over his. The movement brought her maddeningly close, slick curls brushing over the head of his cock; his hips actually _twitched_ in response. “After Shaun was born, I got an IUD put in.”

He blinked. “An I-U-huh?”

She opened her mouth; closed it. Shook her head. “I’ll explain later,” she promised. Then Ava stroked his cock once, twice, gripping tight from tip to root—and fuck, but MacCready saw _stars_. “For now, all you need to know is we’re safe. Okay?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, barely paying attention to the words anymore. His body had already gotten the message that it was _go time_ , and all the rest of it was fading into a distant roar. MacCready kneaded Ava’s hips, gaze dropping between her face and the place where their bodies met; his breath came in harsh pants.

Ava rose up onto her knees again, towering over him. A stray wind blew, catching coils of black hair as she looked down and he looked up—eyes catching, holding, locking in place. She bit her bottom lip, lashes fluttering, and slowly— _slowly_ —eased herself down onto his cock.

And.

Just.

_Fuck_.

MacCready caught his breath in a single harsh gasp, lips parted as he _stared_ up at her, watching the expressions as they flicked across her beautiful face. She was scalding hot around him, _slick_ , _tight_ , gradually sinking down into the cradle of his body with every subtle roll of her hips. It was hot and gorgeous and intimate and _perfect_ , the tension coiling tighter and tighter between them with each second that ticked by.

And then she relaxed against his chest with a soft sigh and he was buried deep inside her. It was…fuck, it was so good; it had been _so long._ Longer still since he’d touched someone he gave a shit about and had her twining her fingers in his hair, body gone sweet and heavy and boneless against him.

“I fucking love you so much,” he murmured, feeling broken inside. Or maybe feeling whatever had been broken before stitching itself back together. Whatever it was, MacCready caught Ava’s mouth in a languidly hot kiss even as he planted his center of gravity on the hard ground and bucked _up_ into her body.

She cried out into the kiss, and he grinned, licking deeper, thrusting again. He was small, but he was wiry and _strong_ ; it was easy enough to bear her weight as he found a rhythm, rocking up with steady rolls of his hips. Ava gripped his hair and sucked hard on his tongue, using her knees against the dirt to help find a counter-rhythm— _grinding_ down against him as she gasped again and again into his mouth.

It should have been strange, how easy it was to find that perfect tempo—but then, they’d made an art form of being able to speak in the field without words. It was like being pitched back into the frenzy of battle, except his only thought, his only goal, was to feel her coming against him before he could lose control. MacCready cursed and broke the kiss, biting down the line of her throat even as he pushed his hand between them. He shoved up her skirt and found the point where his cock drove deep into her body, spreading her wide.

“Fucking hell,” he groaned, fingers dragging between them, circling over her clit. The angle was awkward, but he redoubled his efforts when she let her head fall back and cried out in response— _loud_ , as if they lived in a world where sex could be anything but quick and wary and all too alert for unseen dangers. MacCready almost clapped a hand over his mouth before remembering, hell, _Sanctuary,_ Dogmeat keeping guard not too close and not too far. For perhaps the first time in his miserable life, it was actually okay to make a racket when he was at his most vulnerable.

“ _Fucking hell_ ,” he said again, half-laughing, then _moaned_ with Ava on a particularly hard thrust—louder, then louder again, body fighting to fall out of rhythm as it all went rushing through him. He held on with everything he had, kissing and biting at her throat, sucking on pale skin, thumbing the slick throb of her clit, _fucking_ her with everything he had as his muscles strained and his lungs ached and his whole body closed tighter and tighter into a fist, needing, needing, needing—

Ava dragged her red nails down his shoulders in eight bright lines, crying out as she shuddered around him, and it was all MacCready could do to keep stroking her clit as he lost control. Jerking, shuddering, slamming up up up into her welcoming flesh as he came with a _shout_ , calling her name like he was laying claim.

It seemed to be forever and no time at all before MacCready was slumping back with ragged breaths. Ava went tumbling with him, following him down in a boneless sprawl as he toppled back across the grass. She gave a laugh that caught in the middle with a hitching breath, body tightening around him—making him see fucking _stars_ before he could blink his gaze clear again and just…

Just stare up at the sky, her hair pinwheeled around them, her body half rested on his, the slick heat of their come sticky on their thighs and their breaths slowly evening out. She pressed one hand over his chest as if to count the beats of his heart; he dropped a hand over hers, loving that this kind of intimacy was allowed now.

Neither spoke for what felt like a very long time.

“So,” MacCready finally said, never able to leave well enough alone. He turned his face to kiss the crown of her head. “I wonder if your perfect _Preston_ heard all that.”

Ava gave a snorting laugh—his favorite kind—and elbowed him in the side. “Hush, you,” she warned.

“No, but really,” he added with faux earnestness. “Guy looked like he could use something to relax those stiff muscles; it’d do him some good if he was listening in to the boss getting frisky, yanking it while—” He cut off, cackling, when Ava climbed over him again and caught at his arms in a good, old-fashioned wrestling pin. MacCready immediately retaliated, grabbing her around the waist and rolling until she was pinned to the grass with him rising above her, grinning down at her fit to burst as she pretended to let him overpower her struggles.

(Though both of them knew she could have him spattered across the ground and bawling in a hot second if she wanted.)

“Oh _no_ ,” Ava said, fluttering her lashes up at him. “I’ve been overwhelmed by a smart-mouthed merc.”

MacCready simply grinned and tugged at the loose waist of her skirt, lifting his own hips just enough to push it down around her knees—finally, _finally_ baring all of her. “Sassing’s not the only thing my mouth is good for, boss,” he said, dragging his fingertips in a reverent caress down the soft give of her stomach, across the flare of her hips, to the come-slick curls tucked between lush thighs. “Probably not even the _best_.”

“Oh yeah?” she teased, kicking her skirt aside and deliberately sprawling out for him. Posing, like that pin-up. “And what would you say _is_ the best, Mr. Robert Joseph MacCr…” Ava’s words trailed off as her coy smirk melted into a worried frown at whatever she saw on his face. She rose up onto an elbow, brows knitting. “Bobby,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

_What’s wrong_. Like it was so easy to admit after all this. But yeah, _yeah_ , she was posed out pretty as a _fucking pin-up_ , and if he didn’t come clean now, he may as well kick his own ass from here until the end of time. Because as much as he wanted to think he hadn’t done anything wrong, he _was_ hiding something from her. And the thought of it was burning a hole in his shirt, just a few yards away.

“Uh,” MacCready said, rolling aside and sitting up. He tucked himself away, though he didn’t button back up, even as he reached for his shirt and fished out the picture before he could convince himself now wasn’t a good time.

Now was the _only_ time. The only _decent_ time, if he wanted to be a _decent guy_. And fuck, but he wanted to be a decent guy for her. He wanted to be everything for her. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but uh, I, well, I just…”

Ava sat up, naked and unashamed, watching his face. Patient. So different from that coiffed, made up, perfect woman in the picture and yet _exactly_ the same, down to the warmth in her eyes. “Bobby,” she said, gently.

Wordlessly, he passed the pin-up over. And waited for whatever came next.


	17. Chapter 17

Something was wrong.

It wasn’t enough to get her back up—by now, Ava knew MacCready well enough to be able to read the little tells written clear across his (wonderfully fucked-out) frame. But the mere fact that something was _so obviously wrong_ so very shortly after said fucking out, well…

Well. That wasn’t exactly doing much for an old girl’s self-confidence.

She rose slowly up onto an elbow, studying his face with a frown. “Bobby,” Ava said, as gently as she could. “What’s wrong?”

The answering flush that spread across his cheeks was damning—the way he immediately rolled away from her even more so—and her head filled like a sinking ship with a thousand and one terrible things that could have gone wrong. Fuck, had she not been reading this right? Had she rushed too fast, too far? Was she pressuring him somehow? She knew she could come across like a thousand pounds of swinging bricks, but she could have sworn she’d been riding the brakes hard enough he could back off gracefully if he wanted.

But hell, oh hell, was _that_ it? Had she been _too_ in control? Too authoritative? Was he freaking out about screwing the boss? Had she been too aggressive about what she wanted and spooked him the way she used to spook Nate back in the earliest days before she’d learned to tone herself down to meet his muted expectations? Or maybe… Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was Lucy. Maybe she’d triggered some bad memory, or he’d realized he couldn’t want anyone else now that the love of his life was gone, or he… He…

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” MacCready said, looking anywhere but at her, “but uh, I, well, I just…”

_I._

_I just._

_I just…_

**_Stop._ **

Ava sat up, dark hair swinging around her in a protective cloak, and forced the bubbling fears aside. _Stop. Breathe_ , she thought, digging her nails into her palms to try to drown out the ringing of her own unanswerable fears—the long-buried, niggling insecurities that used to swarm her thoughts back when she was Nate’s perfect trophy wife _._ There was no point driving herself crazy wondering what had gone wrong, she reasoned. There was no point dreaming up a thousand and one ways she could have ruined this before it had really begun. All she could do was be as honest as she possibly could and trust MacCready to be the same.

 _Trust_. That was a word even more precious than _love_ here, now. And God help her, but she trusted this man with all her heart. She thought maybe he trusted her too.

“Bobby,” she said. That was it. Just his name. Just this bare, naked honesty between them. Just _Ava_ and _Bobby_. It was enough. It had to be enough.

He swallowed hard and reached back for his discarded shirt, pulling out a slip of paper. Wordlessly, he held it out to her. There was so much sick fear pooling like rads in her gut that she almost didn’t take it from him.

 _Almost_.

But, Christ, it was better to know, right? Whatever new curveball the Commonwealth had seen fit to throw her, it was, it _was_ , it was just _better to know_. She couldn’t fight ghosts, or fears, or maybe-woulda-coulda-shouldas, or long-dead spouses and all the guilt they dragged like Marley’s chains behind them. But if this, this _whatever_ it was, took some form she could conquer with grit and her gun and a red-painted smile…

She had to give it a shot. She owed herself that much.

Her fingers trembled as she took the paper from him, sitting back with her legs crossed and her stomach twisting queasily. Neither of them seemed to breathe as she spread it open, preparing herself for the very worst, and saw…

And saw…

 _Herself_?

…wait. What?

Ava flicked her gaze up to MacCready, then back down. Up. Down. She frowned, thoughts caught in a confused whir, and MacCready must have read the very worst on her face, because he _immediately_ began falling all over himself to explain.

“I didn’t mean to take it,” he said quickly, reaching out as if to snatch the paper away, then rearing back onto his heels. He dragged his fingers through his hair, making it stand up in crazy light brown tufts. “I mean, _shit fuck damn_ , okay, yeah, I meant to take it. I was snooping. Shouldn’t have been—I know, _I know_ I shouldn’t have been—but shit, when’ve I ever been good at doing what I should anyway? And that house was just standing there, all decayed like rot in the middle of a muttfruit, and I…”

MacCready hissed out a breath; he dragged his hands down his face with a muffled moan. Ava looked up at him again, brows knit together. Lips pressing into a line.

“I was an idiot, okay?” MacCready continued, as if her silence was an accusation. “I know, I know I was a frea—a _fucking_ idiot. But Preston was being a bossy shit and you were gone up the hill and there was that _house_ just sitting there like a puzzle just waiting to be solved and I figured…hell, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. I didn’t touch nothing,” he added quickly. Then he sighed and slumped a little, shaking fingers snarling through his hair again. “Nothing except the picture. And I wouldn’t’ve even touched that except it was _you_ , it was you in one of those old skin mag poses, and that was fucking _weird_ , and, and, and shit, okay, I recognized it, recognized you; I used to jerk it _so hard_ to another one just like it back in the old—”

He reared back, as if his scrambling brain had just caught up with his words, eyes gone huge with steadily growing panic. “Aw _hell_ , shit, _damnfuckshitdamn_ , that wasn’t what I was going to say. I, I just, I just—I knew you looked familiar the first time I saw you, but I swear, I _swear_ I didn’t realize from where. I woulda told you if I had. And I wouldn’t have… That didn’t have nothing to do with what happened here, with us. I kissed you because I wanted to, not because I was thinking of your…” He winced, trapped by his own earnest honesty. “Okay, I was thinking about the picture _a little_ , because uh, I couldn’t exactly help it. I mean, _look_ at it. I mean, shit, don’t look at it; I’m not looking at it. I’m—”

Ava quickly looked down, body gone tight, shoulders shaking.

MacCready made a sound like a dying brahmin. “ _Christ_ , I’m fumbling this like an idiot; I knew I would. I fucking knew it. I’ve never met anyone like you before and I _knew_ I’d go on and fuck it up. Best thing that ever happened to me and I had to go on and… You’ve gotta believe me, I would have told you. Soon. Before all this, if you hadn’t’ve surprised me and, uh, um, not that I’m _blaming you_ or nothing,  but I swear you mean so much more to me than some great tits and a pic from a dirty mag and Ava, _Ava_ I promise you I wasn’t trying to… To… I just… I…”

Pause. “I…”

Pause.

Paaaaaause.

Slowly (slowly, slowly, like his quicksilver brain was _finally_ catching up to the desperate scramble of his fear) MacCready’s eyes narrowed as he studied Ava’s perfectly controlled, perfectly blank expression. His lashes flickered as his gaze darted to the tightness of her mouth. The way her hands _still_ shook around the picture, making the brazenly naked memory of herself sway and dance. The tiny uncontrollable hitches of her shoulders.

“Well, hell. You’re _laughing_ at me,” MacCready finally said, voice flat.

And that, _that_ , was finally what did it. The bubbling, nervous, near-hysterical laughter she’d been swallowing back through MacCready’s fumbling, headlong rush burst out of her in a sudden, sputtering bray. Ava doubled forward, shoulders jerking _hard_ as she sucked in a breath only to let it out in a relieved, snorting cackle. Dear fucking _God_ , she’d been ready to climb the walls with fear, running like mad from the ghosts of self-doubt, only to find…

Only to find that Robert Joseph MacCready was the sweetest, most earnest, most wonderful _dork_ of a man she’d ever had the pleasure to love.

“You,” she managed, gasping around the words, _crying_. “You, you, you…”

MacCready flopped back with a heart-felt groan, fly of his pants opened conically wide around him—and somehow his irritated-slash-relieved expression was even _funnier_ than his frantic, awkward admission had been. Ava laughed so hard the tears were rolling down her cheeks; she laughed so hard her stomach ached. And gradually, eyes rolling fondly, MacCready began to laugh with her.

It felt so, so incredibly good. So _right_.

He reached out a hand and she grabbed it, letting him haul her up against his side. Her body slotted against his long and lean one so perfectly it was like she’d always meant to be there, and he kissed the crown of her head as she muffled stray laughter against his shoulder. It felt so perfect to just let it all out, like she was chasing away a few hundred years of demons.

And who knows? Maybe she was.

“You’re the fucking worst,” he said, tone betraying the absolute opposite, and Ava grinned against his skin and kissed at the freckles dotting his bony shoulders. God, those freckles. She’d never realized he even had them until now—what other secrets had his body been hiding under layers of dirt and tattered clothing?

“Yup,” she agreed easily. “And you love it.”

“Yeah.” His voice dipped low, serious. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Gradually, her laughter began to quiet, then fully subside. Ava pressed her face against MacCready’s shoulder and left another kiss against warm skin, fingers curled around the familiar pin-up. God. This old thing. She remembered the day she took it, grinning up at the camera as she splayed brazenly beneath the studio lights. She remembered the day she drove out to a neighboring town to buy the dirty mag; she remembered showing it to Nate; she remembered the way he’d looked at her, shocked and aroused and appalled all at once, like he wanted to throw her against the wall and fuck her. Like he wasn’t sure he even knew her at all.

Most of all, she remembered being gravid with child—with _Shaun_ —body big and unwieldy and no longer completely her own as she hung the memory of the girl she used to be on the living room wall like a daily reminder. _I’ll never be the perfect wife_ , that gesture had said, even as she’d worn the proper clothes and took the proper job and said all the proper things. _I’ll never be entirely tame._

God, how Nate had hated that picture.

And MacCready?

MacCready saw it, and it made him want to cup her face and _kiss_ her. It made him look at her like she’d hung the moon and stars for him. And that, more than anything—more than the thousand and one other tells she’d been mentally cataloguing without knowing she was doing it, without even really meaning to—was all she needed to know that this thing between them ( _Ava and Bobby_ ) was truly meant to be.

 _Oh Bobby,_ she thought, tucking her face against his neck and hiding a smile across his skin. _I’ve been waiting an awful long time for you._

“So,” Ava said, voice teasingly light and yet filled with all the emotions bubbling just beneath her skin. “You used to ‘jerk it so hard’ to me, hmm?”

He let out a heavy sigh, breath ruffling her hair. “You’re not gonna let that one go anytime soon, are you?”

“I don’t know,” Ava said. She tipped her face up to look at him, grinning brightly into his faux-sullen expression. “Depends.”

He looked back down at her. The warmth in his eyes was enough to make her toes curl against irradiated grass. “On?” he said. His wiry form was warm against hers. His callouses rasped across her skin as he slid one hand down the curve of her waist. She felt so wonderfully _wicked_ laying naked in the soft grass with him; her old stuffy suburban neighbors would have fainted away with shock.

 _Look at Nate’s old woman_.

No, wait. Fuck that. _Look at Ava_.

She sprawled back, deliberately arching her body to make her breasts sway. His eyes zeroed immediately to them, mouth parting as if he was _dying_ to lean in for a taste. Teasing—testing—Ava turned her cheek against the dark spill of her hair and slid her hands down the curve of her neck…across the sharp relief of her collarbone…over the swells of her breasts to pluck tightening nipples with red-tipped nails. She smiled to herself at the way MacCready sucked in a breath, hovering close as if he couldn’t bear to be too far away.

The heat that had banked within her simmered low in her belly. Her thighs shifted against those flickering coils of _want_. She would drown herself in him if she could; it seemed impossible that finally, finally she had a partner who was more than willing to meet her wildness head-on.

“ _Depends_ ,” Ava said, voice gone low and husky. She bit her lip when MacCready let out a stuttery breath; her thumbnails scraped across the coral pink tips of her breasts. “On whether you can find some way to make me forget.”

“Yeah?” he managed. MacCready stroked a hand across her bare flank, rough skin leaving a blazing trail in its wake.

Ava shivered and shifted toward his touch, thighs subtly parting. She was still so wet— _dripping_ with the steadily growing pulse of desire, breaths beginning to quicken. He’d be able to push into her with one smooth thrust if he wanted; he could slide those gun-calloused fingers inside and ride each grasping buck of her body. She squeezed her thighs together once at the _idea_ , then deliberately went loose and inviting—cupping her own breasts like an offering as she watched him from beneath the fall of her lashes.

 _I love you_ , she could have said, trusting him with all of her. _I am yours if you’ll have me_.

“Ava,” MacCready said, sensing the weight of this moment in that way he had. He dropped his hand to the ground just past the rounded curve of her hip and leaned in to kiss her. It was soft, _sweet_ despite the thrum of heat building between them (as if it had ever truly died), promising a thousand and one reckless things that neither of them were ready yet to say.

 _Yeah_ , Ava thought, winding her arms around his neck. She stroked her tongue into his mouth, seeking the molten heat of his, twining together as she pressed up against his skinny chest. _Yeah, I know_. _I know_.

He made a low noise into the kiss, catching her tongue between his teeth before lightly sucking away the sting. She shivered up against him, rising off the ground to press in tighter, claim _more_ —then shuddered _hard_ when MacCready’s free hand dropped back to her waist.

MacCready teased his short nails across her skin, swirling abstract patterns along her stomach as they kissed and kissed and kissed—the unbearable sweetness burned away beneath growing heat, and Ava moaned into his mouth when he _finally_ stroked his hand down to press his palm tight along the curve of her cunt, clever fingers dipping back inside her body. She rode the first stroke with a strangled cry, feeling indecently wet and wound up tight as a drum inside. _Fuck_ , but he knew how to make her feel good.

He turned his face to kiss along her jaw, breaths coming in harsh pants. “That’s it,” MacCready murmured, biting where her pulse fluttered madly in her throat before kissing down the arch of her neck. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Come on.”

His tongue brushed the sharp relief of her clavicle, then trailed down the slope of her breast. Ava let her head fall back, spine bowed in welcome, thighs spread in shameless invitation. MacCready made a strangled noise—somewhere between a chuckle and a moan—and caught her nipple between his teeth even as he circled her clit with the flat of his thumb.

Over and _over_ and over again.

“Good—good distraction technique,” Ava managed, voice hitching mid-sentence. “I barely remember… _Fuck_ , Bobby.”

He laughed again, quietly, tongue swirling across the tight peak of her breast as he tugged back, teeth just barely scraping the sensitized skin before he pulled away. Ava sucked in a breath of protest, but MacCready was already kissing beneath the swell of her breasts and down the soft slope of her stomach. His body shifted over hers, moving across her legs as he sucked light bruises against her skin.

“Bobby,” she said, reaching down to coil her fingers in his hair. It felt so soft, clean from the shower and caught in endearing cowlicks. Her hips shifted almost without her meaning to and she rolled against the thrust of his fingers, letting him spread her wide. “ _Bobby_.”

“Mm,” he agreed, for once without any smart remark. His tongue dipped into her belly button, then swirled around the rim before trailing down the bit of pregnancy weight not even the apocalypse had managed to fully melt away. With anyone else, she may have felt self-conscious—too aware of the silvery lines across her stomach, of the scar of her C-section like a battle wound—but the _noise_ MacCready made as he pressed his cheek to that little bit of softness (like she was the hottest woman he’d ever seen; like she’d tumbled fully formed from his fantasies) sent a wave of grateful heat crashing through her.

And all at once, those little imperfections she’d spent so much time worrying over back in the bad old days—doing crunches when Shaun was sleeping, rubbing oil across her post-pregnant body, studying herself critically in the mirror and choosing clothes that would de-emphasize the heavy weight of her breasts—didn’t matter anymore. Or. No. No, that wasn’t quite right. They all _mattered_.

They just made her feel fucking _powerful_ instead of ashamed.

Ava gave a breathless laugh, fingers tightening in MacCready’s hair as he left one last kiss on her stomach before licking down down down to the sopping heat of her cunt. “God, think of all the housewives you could have liberated with that _mouth_ of yours,” she teased, but the words dissolved into a stuttery gasp at the first flick of his clever, clever tongue. It swirled around his fingers, his thumb, teasing her clit even as he continued to fuck deep inside of her. “Oh _fuck,_ Bobby.”

MacCready pressed a third finger inside her, spreading her wide even as he sucked at the swollen nub of her clit. His tongue circled it over and over, winding her higher and higher. Ava twisted against him, hips pushing up _hard_ as she gasped up toward the sky—feeling deliciously open and exposed, _wanton_ and wicked and free in ways she couldn’t explain, not even to herself.

Just… _yes, yes, fucking yes_ , pleasure building inside her body as she gave herself to this man she loved more than reason; this man who saw her, loved her, wanted her despite everything. _Because of_ everything.

“Bobby,” she gasped, fingers tightening in his hair. The tip of his tongue stroked abstract shapes against the erratic throb of her clit, and each thrust of his fingers made a deliciously _slick_ noise that reverberated through her in unexpected ways. “Bobby, Bobby, I’m going to— _Oh_ , please, Bobby. _Please_.”

He made a noise that drew her body _tight_ around him, tongue pushing past his thrusting fingers to curl inside her even as he reached up with his free hand to wrap his fingers about her wrist. She let go of his hair, hand clasping his in a tight tight tight grip—and that, _that_ was what sent her toppling into another blistering orgasm, MacCready’s name on her lips, his grip keeping her from shattering apart.

It felt an awful lot like being reborn. Or maybe it was more like finally settling into the woman she’d always been—the wicked, quicksilver kind of woman who let mouthy mercs go down on her just a stone throw’s away from the civilization she’d built out of the ruins of the old world. Either way, Ava shivered and quaked through it before gradually winding down. She let out a shivery sigh, fingers petting MacCready’s hair as he patiently rode out the aftershocks.

Then, slowly, he slid his fingers free. He kissed her thighs, her stomach— _right_ over that old C-section scar. He slid up the supine stretch of her body, licking his glistening fingers clean with a smile that was half earnest and half cocky and pretty much all besotted.

 _This man_ , Ava thought, letting go of his hand to wind her arms around his neck. She rolled toward him, pressing against the long, lean lines of him, licking her taste from his tongue. _Thank God, thank God for this man._

He hummed a note, hand sliding across the dip of her waist to her hip, kiss slow and languid. A breeze gusted, sending black tangles of hair around their faces, and the forgotten picture lifted from the ground.

MacCready immediately slapped out a hand, catching it before it could flutter away— _still_ kissing her hard enough to make her toes curl, the showoff. She laughed into his mouth, biting at his full lower lip, and MacCready grinned. “Don’t want Preston getting his mitts on this,” he teased, dragging the tip of his nose just beneath the shell of her ear. “Or that shifty-looking guy in the coveralls.”

“Who, Sturges?” Ava laughed. It felt like she’d never laughed so much in her life. Maybe she hadn’t; maybe she’d saved it all up for now.

“Yeah, that guy. Can’t have him getting any ideas.”

His eyes gleamed when he was teasing. He looked young and _happy_ —as happy as she felt—and that was all the provocation Ava needed to cup his face between her palms and kiss him again. She’d be doing that a lot now, she knew. Kisses good night and good morning, kisses for a crack shot, kisses for all the close calls they would survive together, kisses to sooth his worry over Duncan and her own over Shaun.

Kisses when they finally, finally managed to pull their entire little family together again.

 _I’m so glad I found you_ , Ava thought, melting into a kiss that went on and on and on as if neither of them could ever get enough. _I’m so glad I get to have this_.

It had been a long, long journey from the girl in that picture to the shadow who’d been Nate’s subdued wife to the woman she was now. A Valkyrie, a temptress, a warrior swinging into battle, determined to remake the world because it needed to be done and because somehow she _could_. She was more powerful than she ever gave herself credit for, decked in war paint or not. And what was more, she was able to be more vulnerable than she ever thought she could be again, curled in MacCready’s arms and kissing him like she never wanted to do anything else. This was the version of herself she had always wanted to be. This was who, in some strange way, she felt like she was _meant_ to be. Strong and fierce and protective and _protected_ and loved and desired. Soft but not weak. Honest and unafraid.

…sprawled out buck-ass naked within a stone’s throw of her old suburban prison, perfectly herself for the first time in years.

 _And to think_ , Ava thought, smiling against MacCready’s mouth, sinking deeper into the kiss, _all it took was the end of the world._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for following along! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> If you're interested in my writing AND post-apocalyptic worlds, follow me on Tumblr at http://khirsahle.tumblr.com. I am working on original post-apocalyptic romances (with lots of dirty bits, naturally) that I think you may enjoy!


End file.
